Three
Decades of Beautiful, Comfortable, Spectacular,
Zero Energy Buildings That Heat, Cool & Power themselves from FREE
Abundant Solar Energy
Zero Energy DesignTM Buildings Can Have ZERO
Annual Energy Bills - They Do Not Even
Have To Be Connected To An Energy Company
By Larry
Hartweg - World’s Foremost ZED Master
Integrated, Holistic
Systems Engineering Principles and Practices
for
U.S.
Department of Energy Zero Energy Home Program
Many Zero
Energy Homes have been built nationwide
DOE Million Solar Roof Program is approaching its goal
Zero Energy Homes from $60 / sq.ft. and up
Some low
cost ZEH’s provided by DOE /
Habitat for
Humanity
ZeroEnergyDesign.com has imagineered hundreds
of ZEH’s since 1979 - World’s
Foremost Experts at ZED
Larry
Hartweg was selected by U.S. Department of Energy
Oakridge National Labs to present their one day workshop:
“Three Decades of
Lessons Learned”
At
the prestigious DOE /
Conference
in
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/buildings/Workshops_07.html#14
Larry Hartweg was the
largest exhibitor and speaker at Jimmy Carter’s National Energy Exposition
Tradeshows
We do NOT
have to wait for new energy efficient technology
What we need now is BETTER EDUCATION about that which was demonstrated long ago,
so we can accelerate the necessary ZED solution implementation
Copyright
1980 – 2007 Larry Hartweg www.ZeroEnergyDesign.com
All
international rights reserved - Tenth Edition - October 2007
- No
reproduction in any form without explicit written permission -
“We did not inherit the Earth
from our parents to plunder for our selfish desires.
We
borrow it from our children, and we must return it to them one day soon.”
- Based on an ancient Native American Proverb
God and our
children will judge the value of OUR lives by the way we leave the Earth.
Our grandchildren’s legacy is in jeopardy. Zero Energy DesignTM is long overdue.
Abundant
Energy In Harmony With NatureTM
Zero Energy DesignTM Preface
For over 27 years, Zero Energy DesignTM has been using Holistic
Systems Engineering
to design beautiful buildings with nearly-zero energy bills – some do not even
have to be connected to utility companies. All of our designs create an Abundant
Energy Lifestyle In Harmony with Nature, with No Burning of Hydrocarbons,
Petroleum, Gas, Coal, Alcohol, Biodiesel, Wood, Nuclear Waste or Global Warming
Greenhouse Gases (such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide,
hydroflourocarbons, and other environment-damaging gases, or unhealthy soot and
smog).
Zero Energy
DesignTM (ZED) is a joyful,
sustainable, bright-and-beautiful, cost-effective lifestyle - lived in complete
harmony with nature. ZED’s ultimate
goal is to live well, and contribute to the productivity of society, WITHOUT
wasting any non-renewable, unhealthy, polluting resources. ZED offers a clear, proven path to
cost-effectively reduce Global Warming and eliminate the modern American Energy
Crisis in only a few short years.
The
ZED logo includes an American Eagle soaring high on a natural energy thermal
updraft.
We love “Sky Venture” and the
As individuals, companies, and
countries, our goals should include “Abundant Energy In Harmony With NatureTM.”
We need comfortable, durable, affordable, attractive homes with NO ENERGY BILLS
that are excellent investments in an environmentally sustainable future.
Eventually, even our transportation energy should also come from clean,
renewable, abundant “free energy” sources like the sun - Recharge your electric
car from your rooftop.
Earth’s
ecology needs to restore clean air and water. Our children and grandchildren
will need more wholesome food. We must transition toward providing worthwhile
jobs in farsighted companies, which are based on sustainable business
practices, in contrast to those of today that propagate the many problems of
our seriously shortsighted past.
As a nation, our goals
must include energy independence, and a growing supply of CLEAN
energy to maintain economic prosperity. This energy is readily available.
We merely need the infrastructure to put it to productive use. We must convince
our myopic elected political representatives to STOP using our taxes to
encourage and subsidize historically
BAD ENERGY POLICIES like burning deadly petroleum and coal environmental
pollutants, and diverting land and scarce water to inefficiently produce
biofuels from food.
As a planet, every
individual, company, and nation must move toward ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY. Ultimately, the very existence of
humans on Earth depends on it.
0.1 News Media 60-Second Sound Bite
Press Release Material
Simple One Sentence Summary: “If a family can afford to buy a new home costing a $100,000 or more, then there is no longer any valid reason that they should ever have to pay utility bills, UNLESS they ignore the valuable material in this book.”
Once every three years, the U.S. Department Of Energy, and Oak Ridge National Laboratories, sponsor an International Buildings Conference. For their prestigious Tenth Conference in 2007, Larry Hartweg of Zero Energy DesignTM, Inc. was selected as the featured primary all-day workshop speaker to present “Three Decades of Lessons Learned.” He is one of very few energy experts in the world with the lifetime experience and successful track record to teach these valuable lessons to others. Much of his ZED unique integrated Holistic Systems Engineering material is not available from any other source.
Since the first solar energy tax
credits in 1978, Hartweg has been the largest
exhibitor and most popular speaker at the National Energy Expositions. His insights,
and three decades of experience eliminating energy bills far exceed the work of
anyone else. Larry is a Second Generation Energy Research Scientist - highly
focused on cost-effective, innovative,
“FREE” energy solutions, which can in some cases cost LESS per square foot than
conventional inefficient building construction.
Abundant Energy In Harmony With NatureTM is arguably The Number One Solution to the Number One Problem in the world today. This book carefully explains why, in detail.
ZED has the potential in one generation to ELIMINATE the need for: energy imports, sending trillions of dollars to oil-rich nations that harbor radical terrorists, oil-related wars, bad balance of trade, trillions of dollars of national debt passed on to our grandchildren, ecological damage caused by burning fossil fuels (coal / oil / gas), and expensive energy’s consumption of scarce public funds that could otherwise be spent much better on providing: good domestic jobs, superior education, food, housing, clothes, and improved healthcare for everyone.
Plentiful, clean, low-cost energy, and efficient use of natural resources, are ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL to the future growth and prosperity of all humanity. Those who respond slowly will suffer most of all. Inefficient use of non-renewable energy slows economic growth, reduces international competitive ability, and loses jobs to those who are more efficient.
We do NOT need to wait for new technology. Zero Energy DesignTM Holistic Systems Engineering has ALL of the answers we need TODAY. What is missing is ZED education.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy – Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy group: “All our buildings will feature energy-efficient design, construction, and materials as well as renewable energy technologies. In effect, each building will both conserve energy and produce its own supply, to be one of a new generation of cost-effective ‘Zero-Energy Buildings’ that have NO NET ANNUAL NEED FOR NON-RENEWABLE ENERGY.” The sooner we get started, the less traumatic the transition will be for our grandchildren’s future. Constructing inefficient conventional buildings with high energy bills must be considered a CRIME AGAINST ALL HUMANITY.
In a few years, you will even be able to plug your rechargeable electric car (like the new Chevrolet Volt, or the 2007 130-mph, 250-mile-per-charge, Tesla Motors Roadster) into your photovoltaic solar electric roof (or windmill), and drive around for FREE. It is all part of today’s Zero Energy DesignTM.
Zero Energy DesignTM, Inc. has been irrefutably demonstrating “how” to eliminate utility bills for 27 years. The Federal and State Governments are aggressively subsidizing the reeducation of homebuilders and buyers with the U.S. Department of Energy Zero Energy Home program, grants and tax subsidies, which can add up to tens of thousand of dollars per home, and a hundred thousand dollars for commercial buildings. The aggressive new millennium goal is to improve our building codes so ALL new homes will have ZERO net annual utility bills – eventually making new homes with utility bills ILLEGAL to build. Feasibility was demonstrated many years ago. What we need in AGILITY.
The new
The
Cost-effective use of solar energy provides Abundant Free Clean Sustainable Energy In Harmony With Nature, with ZERO contribution to man-made climate change / Global Warming. The only thing that is missing (in extremely inefficient homes today) is the knowledge (found in this comprehensive book) about how to take advantage of solar energy plus energy conservation, in a cost-effective affordable Zero Energy Home.
Significant new alternative
energy subsidy legislation is already being rapidly passed by the 2007 U.S.
Congress, and is expected to be signed into law soon to accelerate our American
energy independence, help solve our current energy crisis, and man-made climate
change reduction goals of the Bush Administration Environmental Protection Agency
(which has established a target of an 18% reduction in Global Warming
greenhouse gas emissions).
The ZED technology required to do this was for the most part readily available decades ago. It was originally subsidized by the Carter Administration 1977-1981, (but unwisely terminated by Ronald Reagan in April 1981). The 1973 Oil Embargoes were a trumpet-in-your-face Wake Up Call, but Reagan slapped the Snooze Button, and put American energy policy back to sleep for 24 more years, until the 2005 Energy Policy Act finally became law, reinstating and increasing Carter’s 1978 Solar Energy Subsidies.
According to the U.S. Department
of Energy: “Our nation’s buildings consume MORE ENERGY THAN ANY OTHER SECTOR
OF THE
Our inefficient buildings are THE most significant reason for the modern American Energy Crisis, AND Global Warming – Even more than our American gas guzzling SUV’s (which are among the most inefficient common vehicles on the planet). Energy production for inefficient American buildings is a major contributor to air pollution - particularly sulfur, mercury, smog, acid rain, atmospheric particulates, deadly heavy metals in the air, and subsequently our water supplies, fish and baby’s milk, AND especially Global Warming greenhouse gases. Air pollution and unhealthy indoor air quality (IAQ) in poorly designed and constructed buildings contribute to expensive respiratory illnesses and asthma, as healthcare costs spiral ever upward, and quality of life declines for the multitudes that eventually die an unnecessary early death from preventable lung diseases.
The non-renewable energy trend
is finally beginning to turn around. Last year, SOLAR ENERGY EQUIPMENT SALES
INCREASED 45%. For many very-good reasons, solar energy is now the fastest
growing energy source on our planet. It is one of the few practical, proven,
widely available, cost-effective alternative energy sources (along with wind
and hydro electric) that generate zero greenhouse gases, and thus do NOT
contribute at all to deadly Global Warming. ZED’s use of solar energy (and
other clean free energy sources) can produce a lower-cost, sustainable,
Abundant Energy Life In Complete Harmony With Nature.
Zero Energy DesignTM (ZED)
has been prepared for decades to make it happen, with
energy-expense-eliminating, clean, sustainable, reliable, proven
solar-energy technology.
ZED highly recommends that the news media read THIS book, understand
“why” the Department of Energy is now subsidizing Zero Energy DesignTM, and that
you plan extensive media coverage about the radical changes that MUST happen to
American energy usage in the very near future. The solutions to the new
millennium American Energy Crisis, and Global Warming are close at hand. What
is now needed is architect, builder, and consumer reeducation about the
27-year track record of Zero Energy DesignTM.
0.2 High Level Summary for Potential Zero Energy
Home Buyers and Investors
You do not have to understand anything about the
thermal systems in Zero Energy DesignTM (ZED) homes. These innovative homes are
simply more attractive, with much more glass and visual appeal than any
conventional home that building codes allow to be constructed today.
By design, Zero Energy Homes just
happen to NOT require monthly utility bills,
which means that you can afford a larger, nicer, more comfortable home for the
same monthly payment, with more innovative “Abundant Energy Amenities” than any
other home in the same area today. It is even possible to have an “off the
grid” ZED home, with NO utility company connection required (although these do
need batteries for energy at night).
Conventional high utility bills
REDUCE the market value of a home. Conversely, lower or no utility bills
INCREASE the market value of a home. In a recent Internet online poll, 100% of
potential homebuyers said they were now interested in energy efficiency. It only
makes great sense to everyone – Why waste money needlessly (regardless of what
your income level is)? As energy prices continue to increase in the future, a
Zero Energy Home will appreciate much faster than a house that requires high
utility bills. When Zero Energy Homes become the American standard, and
building codes make it illegal to build any more inefficient homes, then
conventional homes will significantly decline in value. The current federal and
state government, and utility company subsidies for Zero Energy Homes are going
to accelerate our national transition toward homes with no utility bills.
In light of the 2005 Energy Policy
Act that subsidizes Zero Energy DesignTM, major growth-oriented corporations
(like Wal-Mart and many others) are now evaluating the cost effectiveness of
Zero Energy DesignTM concepts with the newest buildings they are constructing.
The latest
Wal-Mart’s CEO has even suggested
that Wal-Mart may soon sell the same kind of photovoltaic systems that they
decide to use on their own buildings. The U.S. Department Of Energy, Oakridge
National Laboratory has had multiple discussions with Wal-Mart executives about
setting up a full-sized three-bedroom Zero Energy Home in Wal-Mart parking
lots, and selling Do It Yourself Zero Energy Home kits. (Total completed cost
roughly $100,000)
DOE people have designed and built
several such Zero Energy Homes using Structural Insulated Panels (SIP’s) for
Habitat for Humanity since 2002. ZERO ENERGY HOMES ARE NOT JUST FOR THE WEALTHY
ANY MORE. Habitat for Humanity has made over 20 ZEH’s available at very low
cost to worthy recipients. Would YOU be interested in a $100,000 3-bedroom
home with no utility bills? Would you pay more (or less) for the same size and
quality home with high utility bills?
As large American corporations
continue to make major future investments in the elimination of their own
utility bills with ZED, many people will suddenly realize the money that they
too can save on their own home. Conventional home values will decline even
faster in a downhill snowball effect, while Zero Energy Homes will benefit from
an increased rate of appreciation.
Who will buy a conventional
inefficient home, when Zero Energy Homes become much more available than they
are now? The concept
is no longer rocket science. ZED is about to become a Wal-Mart commodity, which
everyone at all social levels will soon demand.
A family’s investment in their home is often the largest one they’ll ever make in a lifetime. Well-designed and constructed Zero Energy Homes will always be the very best type of home to own both now and in the future. High energy bills are NOT a “good old days” nostalgic thing that will ever “come back in style.” (smile)
There is much for a potential
homebuyer to learn to make the best possible new ZED home decisions that they
possibly can, but most of all, NEVER INVEST IN A CONVENTIONAL HOME WITH HIGH
UTILITY BILLS EVER AGAIN. Sell your conventional home now, before the
majority of American’s begin to understand the ultimate impact of ZED on
conventional home values, as energy bills increase every year. The thousands of
dollars in 2005 Energy Policy Act, Zero Energy Home incentives are currently
scheduled to expire at the end of 2007. Those who procrastinate may soon lose
valuable early-adopter benefits.
The new “Energy Efficient Mortgage” (EEM) program recognizes the long-term
financial benefits of Zero Energy Homes. EEM’s let you borrow more for capital
expenditures that help eliminate energy bills, with lower total monthly
payments, if you like. Remember, mortgage interest rates are tax deductible,
energy bills are not. Thus, a Zero Energy Home can REDUCE your monthly
expenditures and taxes, and give you more money to just have fun.
Energy Efficient Mortgage (EEM) Information Sources:
http://www.HUD.gov/offices/hsg/sfh/eem/energy-r.cfm
http://www.EnergyStar.gov/index.cfm?c=bldrs_lenders_raters.energy_efficient_mortgage
http://www.FHA.com/energy_efficient.cfm
The 2005
There are multiple educational energy
innovation incentive programs, which will be phased out soon, as the ZED
construction industry becomes the normal way of building all new homes. The
sooner YOU make the intelligent decision to buy a new ZED home, the more
financial benefits you will receive, which will further reduce your initial
investment, eliminate monthly utility bills, and also help lower your income
taxes and monthly mortgage payments.
Republicans and Democrats alike in
our slow-moving Congress, Senate, and Administration are very worried about the
current American energy crisis, and the potential devastation of man-made
climate change Global Warming - caused by subsidized burning of expensive,
non-renewable, unstable fossil fuels. Intelligent politicians now know that ZED
is essential to solving many energy problems. They want to strongly
encourage YOU to start investing wisely in clean, abundant, renewable energy
TODAY. They are allocating billions of dollars to make it happen sooner, rather
than later.
Larry Hartweg (of
ZeroEnergyDesign.comTM) has been selected by the U.S. Department of Energy,
Oakridge National Laboratory to present his decades of accumulated ZED knowledge at a
leading-edge workshop, at their prestigious 2007 International Buildings X
Conference in Clearwater Florida (something that only happens once every 3
years, since 1977 when Carter created the U.S. Department of Energy to deal
with America’s out-of-control Energy Crisis).
Since Jimmy Carter’s 1978 Solar Tax
Credit incentive programs, Larry Hartweg was the top exhibitor and presenter
at the National Energy Exposition educational tradeshows. The material in
THIS mature ZED textbook details Hartweg’s decades of practical cost-effective
zero energy experience, and many Lessons Learned to help people who are new to
the field from repeating expensive bad design and construction practices (like
roof angled glass, etc.).
The net effect of EEM’s plus
multiple-source ZED incentive programs (including energy efficient appliances,
etc.) is that YOU can now own a more valuable, rapidly-appreciating,
beautiful-and-comfortable abundant-energy home, for less “total cost of
ownership” for the life of your home. The time to act is NOW, before the
short-term energy efficiency incentive programs are phased out, ZED becomes the
normal way for all homes to be constructed, and the value of your existing
conventional home with high energy bills begins to rapidly decline.
ZED homes are simply MORE ATTRACTIVE,
COMFORTABLE, and FUNCTIONAL, yet they CAN COST LESS PER SQUARE FOOT THAN ANY
CONVENTIONAL HOME with high energy bills (which can easily total over $100,000
during the life of your house, especially with today’s rapidly-rising energy
prices, and the worsening supply-versus-demand for non-renewable, unstable,
highly-polluting foreign imported energy sources, driving prices higher).
The decades of ZED creative ingenuity
that have gone into eliminating energy bills in a stunning Zero Energy Home are
also applied to our fully-integrated Holistic Interior “Lifestyle Decorating,”
which takes advantage of abundant natural daylight and sweeping views through a
large quantity of exterior glass.
ZED can integrate and optimize
inexpensive fine home Fun Features like a low cost indoor swimming
pool, swim spa, hot tub, tropical greenhouse, solarium, formal conservatory,
aviary, pet room, sports court, large dance floor, inexpensive entertainment
area, or anything else that you desire and your budget allows.
We even have a wide range of
extraordinary plans and ideas for low-income, affordable, subsidized homes
for law-abiding, deserving people with disabilities, who need economical living
assistance, up to Multimillion Dollar Celebrity ZED Homes.
Soon, conventional home values
will fall far behind the new generation of Zero Energy Homes, which can be
more appealing, can cost less per square foot to build, and require NO monthly
utility bills. Who will want to buy a conventional home, when more Zero Energy
Homes become available in the near future?
The time to SELL your conventional
home is right now, before the market for homes with utility bills declines even
further.
Existing inefficient conventional
homes can indeed be “retrofitted” with many of the ZED concepts for some of the
desired benefits, but things like windows of the wrong size and type, in the
wrong location and orientation, are difficult to deal with AFTER a
poorly-designed traditional home has been built.
ZED is much less expensive when
incorporated into new construction, which integrates the best Zero Energy Home features, for
maximum net benefit to the beauty, efficiency, and functionality of the
more-valuable home.
The time to sell your conventional
home and invest in a state-or-the-art ZED home is N O W, while the
Federal Government
Beware the “Johnny Come Lately” Inexperienced “Me Too”
Imitators
Since the U.S. Energy Policy Act
of 2005 created nationwide interest, with incentives for Zero Energy
Homes, we are suddenly seeing CLUELESS “business as usual” architects and
builders claiming that they can design and build Zero Energy Homes, when they
have actually never ever done it before. They think that they can get by with
conventional energy inefficient design, plus some solar hot water or
photovoltaic solar electric panels. WRONG! Don’t let them learn by trial and
error on YOUR new home.
Resistance to change in the building
industry is way beyond ENORMOUS. Many modern builders came of from the ranks of
minimal-education carpenters. They lack the ability to do research or make
major changes in the way they do business. Those who will even try anything
different are extremely rare in our non-learning nation today.
We applaud those Johnny
Come Lately’s who at least make an effort to improve, BUT almost none of them
take the time to understand everything found in this book – it is just too
overwhelming for a business-as-usual carpenter to take in all at once. They
fail to rely on consulting and assistance from ZED experts.
We do not want to detract from their
desire to improve, but rather we offer CONSTRUCTIVE criticism for the many
expensive mistakes that the Jonny Come Lately’s are now making,
in order to claim that they offer Zero Energy Homes (when they
still have a long way to go).
How can you differentiate the
imitators from the real ZED experts? It is EXTREMELY easy to do. When I’ve
talked to many laggardly latecomers (who are really risk-adverse foot
draggers), they have a few behavior patterns that are easy to spot. One is that
I’ll point out something they are doing that is a really bad energy waster
(like a dark roof, or an air conditioning vent in the laundry room), and they
often say: “Yeah, but you have to build what the customer is used to and wants
to buy.” That is their way of justifying non-compliant
“do tomorrow what they did yesterday” stupid architecture and very bad energy
inefficient building practices.
In March 2007 there was a building
energy conference where these Johnny Come Lately “Zero Energy Homes” were
presented. Without naming the uneducated offenders, we offer some comments so
YOU will not make the same kind of uninformed mistakes that these Johnny Come
Lately’s obviously did.
This is a common mistake made by
conventional builders who are trying to get started with first time Zero Energy
Home construction. Notice how the south side has an avoidable offset, which
shades its good southern glass during part of the day.
There is a small overhang for the
upstairs south facing glass in the summer, but none for downstairs. ZED really
does not like the use of oriented strand board.
Another “business-as-usual” error (if
you look close) is the use of Tyvek envelope wrap, instead of a radiant barrier
plus air gap, which would reduce undesirable radiant heat transfer, especially
in the summer heat.
Essentially all Zero Energy
Home beginners make the serious mistake of a single shell envelope design. The
whole house roof and walls have one large temperature differential, instead of
two small temperature differentials, which would GREATLY reduce undesirable
heat transfer, ESPECIALLY through doors and windows. (Chapter Eleven and
Twelve)
This house is worse than the one
above. It has even more conventional offsets in the south wall that shade the
good south facing glass during much of the day. It has more corners, which
increase construction cost AND utility bills.
This house has a small desirable
sunroom, but for some silly reason, it is elevated above the ground, which
allows intemperate outside air to be exposed to a lot of surface area
underneath, avoiding the great value of the ambient temperature earth. What
kind of mess will accumulated under the sunroom. We can’t imagine what they
were thinking.
The sunroom offset, and the end of
the house provide a lot of very bad western glass, which will be a large
problem in the summer heat. The choice of white walls will be good for the
summer, but the darker roof will produce a hot attic, and increase
air-conditioning requirement.
Notice the flue pipes for the heaters
and fireplace – VERY bad things. One flue pipe even shades solar panels. You
can see that this house is a series of poor after thoughts to conventional
construction – CERTAINLY NOT HOLISTIC ZED SYSTEMS ENGINEERING.
Notice the two different angles for
solar hot water and minimal photovoltaic panels. This is correct from a solar
panel perspective – different types of solar panels need to be optimized differently
for different times of year, when the sun’s location varies annually by 47
degrees. If there was a swimming pool, its panels would have to be a third
angle. However, we feel (and most of our clients agree) that THIS TYPE OF
ROOF IS UGLY. Our modern ZED roof completely hides ALL solar panels so they
cannot be seen from anywhere on the ground. Only people in an airplane can see
them.
This Johnny Come Lately “Zero Energy
Home” is curious. It has a simple easy-to-build, inexpensive shape. It is obviously
dominated by an equipment-oriented mentality (instead of a wise envelop
design).
Because of its poor envelope thermal
design, it needs a LOT of equipment. The array of non-integrated, afterthought
photovoltaic electric panels look like $20,000+ for a small home.
It has solar hot water panels, for a northern climate hydronic radiant floor
(HRF). There is even a small PV panel for the HRF pump. The PV and the HRF
designers obviously did not talk to each other (chuckle).
This is NOT a very attractive
exterior appearance. The western carport does provide some afternoon summer
shade for the western glass (which gives you a lovely view of the car –
snicker).
And, we saved the very worst of this
series of 2007 Johnny Come Lately Zero Energy Home disasters for the last. The
thermal envelope for this UGLY thing is so bad that the HRF solar hot water
panels fill the southern side of the simple gable roof of this cold climate
home. They are a bit too high, sticking up above the roof peak to catch cold
northern wind. HRF is both expensive AND obviously UGLY.
The skylight contributes
significantly to the undesirable thermal load of this poorly-designed home.
During the heating season, the warmest air will rise and be exposed to the
conductive skylight glass – losing expensive energy 24 hours a day – especially
at night. In the summer it will be a very bad solar furnace, with a large air
conditioning requirement. The curious thing is that the thermal disaster
skylight is immediately above a double south facing window, which will provide
abundant daylight. What was THIS idiot
architect thinking?
The half-round eyebrow window is
difficult to insulate and cover with a drape. It will lose a lot of the heat
from the warm air that rises to the top of the room.
The windows on the west side will
capture a lot of undesirable solar heat in the summer.
The fact that this terrible HRF
design covers the south side roof means that there is essentially no room to
add photovoltaic solar electric panels, as they become increasingly less
expensive and more cost effective, in the next couple of years. How
shortsighted is that? This Zero Energy Home Johnny Come Lately only scratched
the surface of a deep topic.
How should this home’s thermal
envelope been designed in the first place?
(1) Eliminate ALL roof-angled glass,
(2) Eliminate the $20,000+ solar powered hydronic radiant floor system,
(3) Use the money saved to build a ZED solarium (Chapter 6 and 11) on
the south side.
The solarium will add
beautiful usable space to the house. It will heat the whole house on summer
days. It will allow more south-facing glass and beautiful views than the house
now has. It will also leave plenty of room on the roof to add a photovoltaic
system in the future.
ZED Experience Counts! It is VERY Cost Effective
Here are a few questions to ask
architects and builders, to help you discover how well informed, or totally
clueless they really are. All of the answers are described in detail in our ZED
book.
For the location where
you want to build a new home:
What are the primary
mechanisms of heat transfer? How do they apply to a home?
What types of insulation
work best? (conduction, convection, radiation) Where and why?
What is the sun’s azimuth
at sunrise and sunset, summer and winter?
What is the sun’s peak
altitude summer and winter? (47o difference) Why is this critical?
What are the annual
degree-days of heating and cooling requirement?
What is the role of
enthalpy in residential human comfort control? (sensible temp. + humidity)
How large should the
window overhangs be on the four sides of a Zero Energy Home?
What is the annual
average BTU/sq.ft./day solar gain potential?
What are the typical
monthly insolation levels?
What is the monthly
diurnal relative humidity? Why are each of the 4 seasons important?
What is the optimum solar
collector angle for photovoltaic panels?
What is the optimum solar
collector angle for domestic hot water panels?
What is the optimum solar
collector angle for 12-month swimming pool panels?
What is the optimum angle
and orientation for passive solar glass?
What is the optimum angle
and orientation for a skylight? (Trick question – NEVER USE!)
How can you heat the
north walls of a house in the winter without fans or electricity?
Where should the laundry
room be located? How should it be designed? Why?
How does a thermosiphon
work? Where or when should it be used? (solar hot water)
What are the lowest and
highest priced walls of a Zero Energy Home?
What is the ambient
temperature of the earth? How is this useful?
Is it acceptable to run
plumbing or electric wiring in exterior walls? (NEVER!)
List the PRIORITIES of
energy consumption that must be reduced in a Zero Energy Home.
HOW do you reduce each of
the higher energy consumption priorities?
What are the fundamentals
of passive solar cooling? Do they work in
What are the essential
elements of a Zero Energy Home roof in a hot humid climate?
How should a ceiling fan
be operated? When and why? (Only when people are in the room!)
How did they make ice in
the summer in the 1800’s, before Edison electrified
List the advantages of a
thermal buffer zone over a conventional single shell house. (MANY!)
What forms of lighting
are the most flexible, with the lowest total cost of ownership?
How would digital sensors
and a $1 microprocessor be useful for room lighting?
What is the best way to
bring abundant daylight into a cheery home? (south glass)
When was solar city
community planning originated? Why and where? (2400 years ago)
What culture invented glass?
What were their earliest lessons learned? (NOT on west)
How do you protect
against lightning? How do you protect against fire? (metal framing)
How can you eliminate
termites and rot forever without using any toxins? (metal framing)
How do you reduce or
eliminate allergens, toxins, and carcinogens in homes? (MANY!)
What is the primary
trigger of asthma? How is it made much worse by your clothes dryer?
What is the most cost
effective way to protect against hurricane damage? (several)
What is the difference
between good windows and bad windows? (complex answer)
Where should the windows
on a house be located? What alternatives do we have?
How large should windows
in different locations be? (big, small, or not at all)
How would digital sensors
and a $1 microprocessor be useful around windows?
How many ways do you know
to reduce heat flow through windows? (ZED has well over 100)
How many ways do you
know to use sunshine to cool a house in a hot humid climate?
How do you cool and
dehumidify a house with no energy bills when the sun is not shining?
What is the primary
source of Global Warming? (CO2) Will your new home make it worse?
What is it like living in
a Zero Energy Home? When did you build
YOUR first one? (1979)
List the Zero Energy Home
incentive programs available to ME. (http://www.dsireusa.org/)
If the person you are
talking to says: “I’ll get back to you later” or “It doesn’t matter” then don’t
waste your time talking to them ever again – THEY ARE A CLUELESS LATECOMER.
An experienced ZED expert should be able to give you a half hour explanation about each of the above, and show you the answers in the book they wrote years ago.
Let’s take one important example that was well documented in the 1970’s. We discuss it in detail in Chapter Seven, but here’s a quick summary. In the hot summer when your air conditioner is running a lot: Would you leave a window open for several hours? Worse yet, would you put a fan in the open window to force expensive cool air outside? Well, . . . THAT IS PRECISELY WHAT YOU DO WHEN YOU TURN ON YOUR CLOTHES DRYER! - IF your insane architect and builder put your clothes dryer in the air-conditioned portion of your home. They obviously haven’t a clue about Zero Energy Home Design. You are paying money, to blow more money out a poorly-designed hole in your house.
ZED got this important design issue right in our very first Zero Energy Home in 1979. This subject is VERY easy to understand, so why are architects, builders and homebuyers so extremely blind to the easily observable truth? Is it merely the fact that it has always been done wrong, so they think we should conservatively continue to do dumb things forever? If you see a floor plan with the laundry room in the air-conditioned space, look elsewhere for an intelligent designer who at least has a clue about what wastes so very much energy in a conventional home. ZED usually locates the laundry room in our intermediate “thermal buffer zone” that is comfortable (typically 65o to 85 o), but not air-conditioned.
A ZED expert should have a long track record of successful homes with near-ZERO
energy bills. None of the Johnny Come Lately “Me Too” architects and builders
even come close. HOMEBUYER / INVESTORS BEWARE! Your new Zero Energy Home architecture
and construction should have direct input from the voice of experience,
to avoid reinventing a square wheel and expensive avoidable
long-term-implication design errors that linger for the life of the building.
Your home is often the most significant investment that most people make. Be SURE it is a wise one that takes full advantage of the Zero Energy Home lessons learned for the last 30 years. Don’t let ZEH latecomers waste your dollars on their trial and error.
Since the 2005
Energy Policy Act reinstated solar energy tax credits, many of the inept
builders who created today’s inefficient, high-energy-bill houses are now
claiming to be “experts” at Zero Energy Home construction. They are winning
awards from judges who are obviously clueless about the ZED technology that has
been demonstrated for three decades. They are receiving positive media coverage
from reporters and journalists who are also without a clue what to do to deal
with
“The thinking which created today’s
problems is insufficient to solve them.”
“Your House and Home” documents one such example of a white-haired Johnny-Come-Lately “Me Too” builder’s implementation of an excessively-expensive, poorly-designed house that is incorrectly advertised as a “Zero Energy Home.”
http://www.yourhouseandhome.tv/ProgramCategory.asp?sid=165&speed=hi&more=1&id=12
http://www.zeroenergyhomedallas.com/
We suggest that you watch this short video, and notice the following serious and expensive inexperienced energy design errors:
The
exterior of this poorly-designed house is high-thermal-mass masonry
construction. In the hot summer, the sun shines on the walls, and builds up
heat, which is then radiated to the house long after dark – Increasing the need
for conventional air conditioning when solar energy is not available. In the
winter, the masonry exterior stays cold and draws heat from the home night and
day.
The exterior shape of the house is quite irregular with many “cuts-and-jags”, which GREATLY increase surface area, turbulent “wind chill” corners, undesirable heat transfer, and construction cost. There appears to be zero consideration for the placement of windows on all sides of the home, including the west side, where every square foot of glass can require 3,000 BTU’s of air conditioning!
The walls are constructed of concrete-filled Durisol blocks, which are made from soft lumber wood chips and Portland cement. These blocks are very porous. The pervasive permeable holes allow humidity to be trapped in areas that can also provide comfortable living space for everything from microorganisms (like allergenic-or-deadly mold, fungi, algae, bacteria, viruses, influenza, legionnaire’s disease, etc.) to small-and-large insects (dust mites, mosquitoes, cockroaches) and vermin over time. This will eventually require the use of deadly pesticides, which may be ineffective because of the design of the Durisol block cavities that prevent free flow of pesticides.
Mineralized wood is NOT a good insulator. Humidity trapped in the cavities of the Durisol blocks decreases their thermal resistance like a wet sponge over time. Portland cement (mixed with the mineralized soft wood) is an even better thermal conductor than wood. The poured concrete and reinforced steel inside the Durisol blocks is both high thermal mass and highly conductive, with thermal conduction through the Durisol blocks to the exterior masonry. This dumb house design increases the capital investment required for systems that heat and cool this unnecessarily expensive, so called “zero energy home.” A better Zero Energy DesignTM would yield healthier, more-comfortable, superior thermal performance at much lower cost.
The video shows
that the roof is insulated with water-based icynene spray foam. Icynene is healthier
for installers than other spray foams. BUT, since it is intentionally designed
to mix well with water, icynene’s open cell structure can trap moisture when
humidity is high, and hold it next to building materials, such as various types
of wooden roof trusses and decking. This wood-food plus moisture environment
encourages multiple forms of microorganisms (like wood rot) to grow rapidly
where the homeowner cannot see the damage being done. The first clue of the
hidden problem will probably be ugly sagging of the structure of the roof,
which may eventually fail catastrophically in high winds. When the roof decking
has to be replaced in the not-so-distant future, the expensive foam is removed
along with the rotten wood.
The predictable roof repair will be quite expensive. ZED cautiously warns
against the use of icynene over wood, especially where humidity is high. It is
a fairly new product that has not been around long enough to fully document the
predictable failure modes.
The “Johnny come lately” inept old-school builder states in this video that his use of Durisol block reduces CO2 released into the air. This is a ridiculous, intentionally-misleading false statement, since a few seconds later he shows his foolish use of an inefficient open fireplace to heat the house. The fireplace releases large quantities of CO2, AND creates a year-round 365-day draft that exhausts conditioned air out of the home, and sucks in dirty air with many allergens like dust, dust mites, mold, mildew, fungi, rot, algae, and pollen (notice the tall pollen pods just outside the windows).
For fresh air ventilation, the house relies on single-envelope casement windows, and an operable SKYLIGHT at the top of the staircase! The only filtering of intake air is bug screen, which draws in small “noseeums” and dust mites - flesh-eating, blood-sucking insects, and smaller things down to thousands of types of allergens and microorganisms. Something similar happens when the clothes dryer is on.
The stupid SKYLIGHT in this supposedly “energy efficient” house is screaming outrageous! It is thermally bad day-and-night, summer-and-winter. On summer days, it creates a solar furnace. On winter days and nights, warm air rises and heat is lost through the glass or plastic at a very high rate. When the skylight is closed, it sets up a convection flow loop that distributes cold air through the house all winter long. In this house, the staircase is open, which means that the upstairs will always be hotter than the downstairs every hour of every day of the year. Even expensive multiple-zone air conditioning running full blast will not be able to create uniformly comfortable temperature and humidity (“enthalpy” discussed in Chapter Two).
The inefficient single-shell house design means a high temperature differential across a single wall on all sides of the house and roof. There is no thermal buffer zone solarium to take advantage of free sunlight in the winter or reduce the temperature differential across the exterior walls.
This
unnecessarily-expensive north
(See Chapter Eleven)
This
exemplarily-BAD mis-named “zero energy home” is nothing but a poorly-designed
conventional home with unnecessarily-expensive photovoltaic solar electric
panels on the roof. It is hilarious that it appears on “Ask The Expert” of the
poorly-researched Your House and Home TV show. What fools the reporter and
builder are!
The fact that this featured home (and others designed and built by this inexperienced group of novice ZED beginners) have won multiple awards from various organizations (like the National Association of Home Builders) is prima facie evidence of what a Non-Learning Nation we live in. We will explain the many thermal errors that they and other “Me Too” designers and builders are making as we discuss Three Decades of ZED Lessons Learned in much more depth throughout this book.
0.3 General Contractor / Builder Summary
In its 2006 “Energy Pulse” survey,
the Shelton Group found that 86% of Americans would choose one home over
another based on its energy efficiency, said Suzanne Shelton, president of
the research and marketing company. Yet 78% of homebuyers reported that nobody
talked to them about energy efficiency during the buying process.
It is long overdue for YOU (builders)
to learn “why” and “how” to build more-beautiful homes that sell well,
appreciate faster, and require NO monthly utility bills. The 86% MAJORITY of
Americans clearly want them, but can’t find them. ZED is constantly being asked
where to find local Zero Energy Home builders.
Since the
Read the previous section, and learn what the
government is teaching homebuyers to look for in a Zero Energy Home. It is NOT
just an inefficient conventional building with photovoltaic solar panels on
top! 70% to 90% of ZED is ENERGY CONSERVATION.
For builders who act quickly, there
is also financial assistance for you to learn how to do it well. Zero Energy
Homes have much stricter construction supervision requirements than today’s
existing insufficient minimum-legal building codes. Soon, more energy-efficient
building codes will be mandated to include Zero Energy DesignTM (ZED)
requirements, but for now, your subcontractors will need as much retraining as
you do. Zero Energy Homes are NOT like the energy inefficient homes with high
utility bills that they have been building their entire career. You will have
to supervise subcontractors closely, to make sure they do NOT merely
repeat the inefficient things they have always done in the past.
General Contractors who embrace ZED
quickly, and develop an excellent track record of monitored Zero Energy Home
actual performance, will profit greatly and have more business than you
have ever had before. You will not have to advertise – buyers will come to
those with a good ZED reputation. The ZED skeptics among you, who ignored what
was proven successful 25 years ago, and are still resistant to revolutionary
innovation, should make plans for early retirement now. Inefficient
energy wasting homes with high monthly utility bills will simply NOT be
tolerated by the informed buying public, once they realize that ZED homes can
cost less, be more beautiful, and eliminate energy bills altogether.
Do not expect the National
Association of Home Builders to help you very much – The NAHB is a
significant source of the last 30 years of strong resistance to change. NAHB
STILL incorrectly thinks that Zero Energy Homes are many years in the future.
Here is the obtuse official
position of the “NAHB Research Center”, published on their website in
February 2006: “… with continued federal research and development programs to
lower the cost of advanced energy-efficiency building technologies, the ZEH
(Zero Energy Home) concept will BEGIN to diffuse into the U.S. home market as
early as 2012.”
Anyone can see from this ignore-ant
“wait and see” statement that the NAHB STILL essentially refuses to acknowledge
that Zero Energy Homes even existed over 27 years ago, and have been working
wonderfully ever since. Our ZED book is obviously intended to EMBARRASS the
inept NAHB leadership into waking up and admitting their decades of arrogant blind
denial. The technology that NAHB says that they seek for 2012, was widely
demonstrated, and subsidized by Jimmy Carter in 1978 ! We point out the many serious energy flaws in the NAHB 2006
Official Showcase House below.
Our innovative Zero Energy DesignTM building success stories were presented widely to many NAHB members in the 1980’s
National Energy Expositions (where I was the largest exhibitor and most popular
presenter). Decades later, the uninformed NAHB official position is STILL
essentially, “wait until the technology gets better NEXT decade.” How
outrageously unaware the NAHB “leadership” still is of the 27-year-old Zero
Energy DesignTM truth!
Myopic NAHB mismanagers should accept
major responsibility for the American home energy crisis that THEY perpetuated.
NAHB’s shortsighted curmudgeons should retire immediately, and make room
for next-generation ZED homebuilders.
Lead, follow, our get out of our way!
This obtuse photo appeared on the
National Association of Home Builders’ website during the International
Builders Show in
The large-Delta-T inefficient south
wall is not the worst design flaw in this NAHB photo. Notice the large
west-facing skylight. On winter nights, warm air rises to touch the
low-thermal-resistance skylight, and transfers thousands of BTU’s of heat,
which will then be radiated wastefully to the night sky through the transparent
roof angled glass. This skylight is like a big thermal hole in the
poorly-constructed ceiling / roof. It will conduct, convect and radiate an
enormous amount of undesirable heat transfer, costing perhaps tens of thousands
of energy (and maintenance) dollars over the lifetime of this disaster
architecture.
BUT, the very worst thing that will
happen in this insane NAHB featured “exemplary” house will be during the
hottest part of the summer afternoon, when the sun will be nearly perpendicular
to the western roof-angled skylight, creating a terrible summer solar
furnace, requiring huge amounts of expensive air conditioning electricity,
and still the room will be very uncomfortable until long after dark.
A more efficient high-SEER air conditioner will NOT solve this easily-avoidable energy disaster. A very-expensive photovoltaic solar electric system would be required, just for the air conditioning requirement of this spectacularly stupid skylight alone.
The new homeowners will
eventually have to pay significant money to have the skylight removed and thick
insulation added where it once was. How dumb is that? Is the NAHB going to lead
Albert Einstein said: “The
thinking which created today’s problems is insufficient to solve them.”
NAHB business-as-usual is THE source of most housing energy problems.
Even Dilbert would be truly amazed that this lunacy was FEATURED PROMINENTLY by the inept NAHB in 2005, instead of being ridiculed for what it really is – a gigantic waster of expensive non-renewable energy during a national energy crisis and Global Warming.
This thoughtless NAHB builder’s use
of poorly-planned glass also produces a very uncomfortable house - no matter
where you set the thermostat, or how much money you are willing to spend on HIGHER-than-conventional
utility bills. I cannot think of one good thing that this NAHB skylight
does for the poorly-designed house, other than to embarrass the arrogant,
uninformed architect and builder, and serve as an expensive lesson about
WHAT NOT TO DO! The six southern windows provide abundant daylight, why add the
skylight disaster to this already stupid NAHB-endorsed and publicly promoted
architecture?
National Association of Home Builders’
New American Home®
The Official Showcase House of the 2008 International Builders’ Show
Every year, the NAHB International
Builders’ Show demonstrates in a very impressive way WHY the homes that they
build are such Energy Disasters - often
uselessly wasting 70% to 90% of the energy that they consume.
Their 2008 Official Showcase Home is
falsely claimed to be a “state of the art” design with many features that NAHB
builders should imitate in 2008.
Southwest corner of NAHB 2008 Showcase
House
This laughable demonstration project
was cosponsored by The National Council of the Housing Industry (NCHI) and BUILDER Magazine. IBACOS (
It does contain a lot of interesting
gadgets, and some of its products (like the donated windows and doors) are of
excellent quality, but the fundamental
architecture of the building is catastrophic thermal design. This “Showcase
House” very clearly explains WHY the architects and builders who created the
most significant portion of our current American Energy Crisis are TOTALLY
INCAPABLE OF SOLVING THE PROBLEMS THEY CREATE. Here are just a few of the most
obvious examples that we have observed:
The 2008 NAHB Showcase House is a THREE-STORY LOFT with the staircase wide
open from top to bottom. There is no way to isolate the floors. Almost everyone
knows that hot air rises like smoke up a chimney, or a hot air balloon. This is
called “natural convection.”
Warm air is less dense and therefore lighter than cooler air, which is denser.
The predictable consequence of this
thoughtless modern American NAHB architecture is that the upper floor of this thermal disaster will naturally be much warmer
than the lowest floor (summer AND winter).
The kitchen (often the hottest room
in most houses), is inconveniently located on the third floor, AND in addition,
the kitchen has a large area of west-facing windows, which is where the hottest
summer sun is while dinner is being prepared ! ! !
How spectacularly obtuse can one architect be?
Carefully examine the NAHB 2008
Showcase House picture. Someone must have told the architect that four-foot
overhangs are a good thing in
(like most others) obviously does not understand the seasonal path of the sun.
This picture was taken on a 98o F Central Florida afternoon. The
west (sunlit) side of the house is on the left of this picture. The south side
is on the right. The sun is NOT on the south side of the house very much during
most of the summer. The summer sun rises in the northeast and sets in the
northwest. Even a four-foot wide overhang on the west side can NOT shade
western windows from direct solar gain during the hottest part of the day.
Notice that four of the large 3rd-floor kitchen windows are in full
afternoon sunshine. Add to this the three-story open loft design (with warm air
rising), and the heat of cooking diner, and you have a spectacular solar
furnace at the very worst possible time of day! Even high quality
very-expensive reduced emissivity insulated windows cannot make up for sheer
architectural stupidity in the design of this house thermal envelope. If ANY
sunlight comes through any quality of glass at all, it WILL heat up whatever it
falls on.
The professors who badly train
architects (with no Critical Thinking Skills) apparently do NOT have a clue
about the most fundamental issues of energy conservation OR thermal comfort. The
builders of these disaster designs seem to be Non-Learning Entities that lack
basic Powers Of Observation – like where the sun rises and sets during the various
seasons of the year, and the fact that warm air rises up any open staircase.
This house does have THREE large, EXPENSIVE,
high-SEER (seasonal energy efficiency ratio) air conditioning systems. Minimum
modern building code for split condenser / evaporator A/C systems is SEER 13 BTU’s-per-watt-hour
of seasonal electricity usage. Energy Star certification requires SEER 14. The American
Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy recommends SEER 14.5.
The two A/C systems for the first and
second floor are both SEER 17.8, but the SEER for the third floor (which will run
the most in the summer) is a lower SEER 15. WHY was a lower-efficiency system
specified for the floor with the highest need in this poorly-designed NAHB open-loft
home, with the warmest air continually rising by natural convection to the top
floor?
Think about the industry standard SEER
measurement for a moment. It only considers “sensible temperature” (BTU’s per
watt), which is just one part of the summer human comfort index. In
It’s the HUMIDITY.”
SEER FOOLISHLY IGNORES HUMIDITY, and very few designers understand
it very well. Weather forecasters talk about “Heat Index” (Humiture, or Humidex
in
of an A/C system for hot, humid climates (like much of the southern
High SEER A/C systems leave more water
vapor (humidity) in the air than did lower SEER A/C systems. The higher Heat
Index then makes occupants LESS comfortable (although the sensible temperature
is reasonable). The more-humid-and-uncomfortable building causes its occupants to
lower their thermostat, and thereby INCREASE electric bills, after spending
much more money for a high SEER system. Very
ironic isn’t it!
This is not a problem in the dry American
desert southwest, but it is an important ZED issue wherever “It’s not the temperature; It’s the HUMIDITY”,
like the
The net effect of the poor temperature-only
measurement of SEER is that consumers spend more money on their A/C system, AND
they WASTE even more energy for a less comfortable home! (We discuss the simple
ZED solution alternatives to the high humidity problem created by modern
mandated high SEER A/C systems in Chapter Twelve.)
Consider the following fabulously
funny possibility. If you have a 3-story house with completely open stairways,
it is essentially guaranteed that the cooling requirement on the top floor will
be much higher than the first floor (since warm air rises) – The third floor A/C
will run much longer, and consume much more electricity. The third floor A/C
will expensively produce a lot of cold dense air, which will FALL down the open
stairs to the first floor by natural convection. The hotter it is outside, the
faster this air flow rate will be.
If the three floors of an open
stairway building each have their own independent thermostat, and the occupants
set them to the same temperature, and they select the “AUTO” mode (either heat
or cool as needed), then on the hottest days, the third floor unit will run a
lot, making the first floor too cold, causing the first floor system to
generate HEAT, which will make the third floor even hotter (warm air rising)!
If that does not make you laugh out loud at spectacular modern architectural
stupidity, then you probably will never be able to understand the rest of Zero
Energy DesignTM (which very few architects or builders now do today).
It is sad if you’re not
laughing out loud at the arrogant non-learning people who participated in the
terrible energy-wasting design of the NAHB 2008 International Builders’ Show
Official Showcase Home right now.
The 3-story loft of this misleading NAHB
“state of the art” energy disaster is a MAJOR PREDICTABLE, UNFORGIVABLE ARCHITECTRE BLUNDER! Every year the NAHB seems to
showcase something very bad, but this year is among their very worst. The clueless
NAHB, NCHI and Builder Magazine are apparently NOT capable of correcting their decades
of obtuse thermal construction errors. The criteria they use to evaluate their
industry is in some cases half a century out of date – incapable of accepting
the obvious truth of ZED.
Learning Entities Actively Invite & APPRECIATE Constructive Criticism - Non-Learning Entities Reject &
Hate Criticism, and they defend the status quo (for a lifetime).
For 3 DECADES since the U.S. DOE was created and solar energy tax credits
provided, most architects & builders have been justifying “business-as-usual”
and rejecting well-documented Zero Energy DesignTM and many of the DOE recommendations
AND subsidies.
Lessons that should have been learned
in the 1970’s and 80’s have been lost by the young generation that have been trained
by clueless architecture and engineering professors,
who have NEVER lived in a Zero Energy
Home. They obviously remain uncritical non-learning entities to this day. In
some cases, builders’ own so-called “state-of-the-art innovations” are MUCH
WORSE than their previous wasteful status quo.
How long will those who created the most
significant energy problems in
Let’s delve a little deeper into the
NAHB 2008 Showcase House thermal disaster. The house has an unbelievably large
number of indiscriminate windows (as shown in the above photo). Even though
they are high-quality, low-emissivity, impact-resistant, energy-efficient
windows (which many low-income homeowners cannot reasonably afford) the large
number, size and orientation of these windows do NOT insulate nearly as well as
a properly-designed ZED high-thermal-resistance exterior wall. The window
architecture greatly increases the energy requirement of this Showcase House,
unnecessarily. It even creates too much undesirable, uncontrolled “glare.”
This house does have overhangs to
help shade the south side in the spring and fall (the sun is not on the south
side of this
We think this house looks like an
ugly stack of three mobile homes (formulate your own opinion). The heavy natural
wood angled overhang support beams are purely decorative – unnecessarily
killing big carbon-sequestering, oxygen-producing trees, AND needlessly creating
a cheap-looking, out-of-place, high-maintenance facade. The soft wood was NOT
properly kiln dried, and there some large long cracks in the big beams - less than
a year after construction. The untreated beams were painted with an ineffective
clear coat, which is coming off – leaving ugly gray, rotting, split, soft wood unnecessary
decorative beams, and the same thing on the back yard trellis. This new house already
looks old, in obvious need of repair. The unnecessary exterior wood will soon
have to be painted a solid color, losing the original desired natural wood
finish. This was certainly short-sighted predictable foolishness.
The exposed steel was not properly
prepared or painted – leaving ugly rust streaks around the front porch entry. In
general, the NAHB contractors applied their standard lack of attention to detail, even on this “Showcase House.”
And, the General Contractor obviously did NOT take time to properly supervise
their shoddy workmanship. We thank them all for NOT doing anything special to
this model home. It REALLY does a great job of explaining what is wrong with
non-learning NAHB business-as-usual construction industry status quo. It suggests
that it will likely be a high-maintenance unusual house for the naive family
that eventually buys it.
Some of the materials that were used
on the exterior of this house are apparently not compatible with the paint that
was selected. Paint SHOULD last more than a decade, IF the surface is properly
prepared and the paint correctly applied. On a “Showcase House” the NAHB should
certainly want to demonstrate “Best Practices” (but obviously did not). After
only a few months in the hot
This white stain is difficult to
understand. It is oozing out at the point where one of the precast concrete floor
sections extends to form an overhang, and then it runs dramatically down the cheap-looking
simulated wood siding. Nearly a year after construction, no one seems to care
how ugly it is.
Another thing you can see in this
little photo is the use of cheap ornamental pampas grass. It surrounds the house and is also on
some of the overhang planting areas. It creates a look that the house has been
sitting “For Sale”
for many months, with no one interested in it (which is apparently true).
We think that the inept landscaper
(whose name proudly appears on the billboard out front) was trying for an
inexpensive Xeriscaping effect, but failed (see our ZED Book Chapter Twelve). Many
cities consider alien pampas grass an invasive
“noxious weed” to be aggressively eradicated. Each flowering plume produces
100,000 small seeds that attract undesirable insects and animals. Neighbor’s
yards are already being impacted by voluminous seed proliferation.
What the poorly-trained landscaper actually
created is a predictable EXCELLENT BREEDING AND FEEDING GROUND FOR FLORIDA MOSQUITOES and ROOF RATS
(18” ratus ratus, which
were responsible for spreading the Middle Ages Black Plague, modern Bubonic Plague,
and Typhus) – NOT exactly
what you want around your outdoor patio or pool!
ZED strongly recommends well-designed Xeriscaping (use of
native plants with little or no need for irrigation or mowing), BUT, some
things like alien South American pampas
grass, yucca plants, honeysuckle, Italian cypress trees, heavy shrubbery, wood
piles, and storage box breeding-and-feeding grounds should be CAREFULLY AVOIDED.
Some imported alien plants are VERY BAD for the environment. See your county
agent BEFORE landscaping. Don’t let an inept landscaper give you bad advice. Do
some thoughtful research BEFORE you plant the wrong things.
The NAHB 2008 Showcase House is
located at
Useless Swimming Pool: The NAHB house has an unprotected
outdoor swimming pool. We cannot imagine anyone trying to swim in it a second
time, with the masses of nasty summer mosquitoes. The pool has no solar heater,
making the swimming season short. The high-energy-consumption pool pump will
have to run year-round, and a lot of chemicals used, just to keep the useless pool
from turning ugly green. There is about an 8-foot-high decorative waterfall,
which will cool the pool rapidly if it is ever turned on – cute gadgets –
stupid architecture.
It would have been VERY EASY and
inexpensive to enclose this pool in a ZED sunroom for year-round 365
day-and-night swimming comfort, IF the architect had even a small clue.
The expense of the ugly graying-and-splitting wood shade trellis would have
been eliminated, and only some south-facing patio doors, a north wall, and
simple roof required. The isolated garage next to the pool was designed with a
roof that has NO south facing space to add an inexpensive solar pool heater. How
regretful it is that the opportunity for a comfortable year-round swimming pool,
at very little additional cost, was missed in the original inept NAHB architecture.
This is a badly-designed NATURAL GAS (high CO2
emission) house that will contribute significantly to ongoing man-made climate
change over its lifetime. It does have a (donated) small solar water pre-heater,
but final water heating is high-BTU tankless instant natural gas. The
characteristic of these more-expensive gas heaters on winter nights is that
temperature is controlled in part by the flow rate of the water – Slower water flow
gives the cold source water more time to heat up – common practice in
On winter nights and early mornings, a vigorous
hot shower massage may be difficult to achieve, unless the system is
significantly over-engineered (with particularly-high natural gas consumption).
Your mutually exclusive choices are: (1) a vigorous cold shower, OR (2)
a warm low-flow-rate shower. A simpler, more comfortable, ZED hot water system design
would have been far superior, with ZERO CO2 emissions in all cases.
(NO flames or CO2 emissions allowed in modern ZED homes, except maybe super-clean hydrogen in the
future.)
The third floor kitchen uses natural
gas cooking (with a questionable overhead vent system). The house uses natural
gas space heating during the sunny
it gets dry and clear, which is excellent for direct solar thermal conversion
(essentially ignored by this poor NAHB house design). When the hard freezes hit
The NAHB Showcase House, which
regretfully ignores the valuable abundant
As Zero Energy DesignTM homes become common place in a few years, who would waste
their money on the stupid architecture of this 2008 NAHB Showcase House?
Is this house really the sad “state
of the art” in NAHB house design ? ? ? One way to describe this regrettable,
avoidable situation is “VIRULENT IGNORANCE” – Architects and
Builders actively rejecting basic scientific ZED knowledge that was clearly
documented decades ago, and teaching stupidity to their students and subordinates,
who lack Critical Thinking Skills.
“Mundane Ignorance” is something we
can tolerate for a short time. There are a great many things that most of us
simply do not know. Sometimes we know that we do not know. And, sometimes we do
not even know what we do not know. Motivated Learning Entities are able to
overcome their own mundane ignorance. Non-learning entities cannot.
But, VIRULENT IGNORANCE is a much
more insidious problem for us all to deal with.
It arises when arrogant non-learning entities THINK they know something about a
subject, when they are actually totally clueless. They often can impose their
false ideas and irrational thinking on many weak-minded inDUHviduals. Virulent Ignorance
occurs when many people have assimilated a set of platitudes, clichés, or blatantly
false claims that they presume to be true, without any Critical Thinking Skills
or the ability to evaluate whether they are, or not.
When solid scientific evidence flies
in their face, obsolete platitudes can be used effectively to convince their foolhardy
followers that science is wrong, or evil. Political movements and
profit-motivated corporations strive to gain popular consensus by
indoctrinating as many brain-dead people as possible with whatever bad belief
systems that they need to maintain power and profit. They spend trillions of
dollars on misleading advertisements convincing people to do things that
rational learning entities would not do. You really NEED a low-mpg SUV! “You
can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the
time.”
One serious flaw in the design of
this Showcase House is common to MOST of the NAHB inefficient homes being built
today. Consider this question: Suppose it is 95o F, 85% relative
humidity outside, the bright sun is shining in your large western windows, and
your air conditioner is running most of the time. Would you open a window and leave it open? Worse yet, would you put
a FAN in the open window and blow your expensive conditioned air outside
(drawing in unconditioned dirty outside make up air into your poorly-built home)?
That is EXACTLY what happens when most people turn on their clothes dryer. It has a powerful fan that forces expensive
interior air out its exhaust vent, uselessly wasting energy and the money that your
just spent to cool down and dehumidify your home.
In this NAHB Showcase House, the
laundry / mud room is wide open to the interior of the first floor and the
staircase, with an air conditioner vent next to the laundry equipment, and no
door that can be closed to isolate the dryer from ALL THREE of the expensive air
conditioning vent systems. The first floor air (coolest in the house) is forced
outside in the hot summer by the clothes dryer, at a high CFM air flow rate
whenever the dryer is on.
Spectacularly STUPID right? It is most likely the way your own home was constructed with
an A/C duct next to the dryer. (See Chapter Seven) The vacuum created by your clothes
dryer fan (and other vent fans in your kitchen, bathroom, fireplace, etc.) PULLS
air through the nearby A/C vent at a rate that is even faster than your A/C
unit can push it. In a house with a fireplace or natural gas appliances, the
vacuum can also create a Backdraft that draws deadly carbon monoxide, and other
toxic byproducts of partial combustion, into your living quarters. Building
codes should make this very common bad construction practice ILLEGAL !
Lighting: One
of the easiest things to do in most homes to reduce energy consumption is to
replace the inefficient 125-year-old Thomas Edison screw-in incandescent light
bulbs with modern Energy Star® lighting systems
(like fluorescent or LED systems). 90% of the energy consumed by incandescent
lights produces useless heat. Little girls learn that you can bake a cake with
a light bulb in an Easy Bake oven. In the summer, the high heat from
incandescent lights INCREASES your air conditioning requirement. Replacing one $.50
60-watt incandescent light bulb with a $1.65 (Wal-Mart price: Box of 6 for
$9.88) 13-watt compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL) can save you $80 over its 5-year Total Cost of Ownership.
(See Chapter Six).
The U.S. Senate documented that there
are more than 4 Billion screw-in light sockets
with inefficient incandescent bulbs in the
Ø Reduce
Ø Save the equivalent electricity
produced by 80 base load coal-fired power plants,
and
Ø Reduce fossil-fuel-related atmospheric
emissions by about 158 Million Tons per year
//www.thomas.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c110:8:./temp/~c110Fd3OVr:e5035:
Legislation is being negotiated to
eliminate federal government incandescent lights by 2010, make it ILLEGAL to
sell incandescent lights in
71% of the lights in the NAHB
Showcase House are INCANDESCENT. Their ghastly sin is that they are mostly NOT
standard screw-in fixtures (they can NOT be easily replaced with compact
fluorescent bulbs). Many of the Showcase House incandescent light fixtures have
special sockets that do NOT allow common more-efficient Energy Star light bulbs.
When incandescent light bulb sales become ILLEGAL, the owner this house will eventually
have to replace all the uncommon lighting fixtures at a high cost for the
entire house.
The NAHB incandescents are mostly
“low wattage” light bulbs. Long-life low-wattage light bulbs underpower their glowing
heating element, which makes them last longer, BUT they produce LESS light per
watt of electricity, and MORE INEFFICIENT HEAT than conventional incandescent
light bulbs do. What a really STUPID idea that is!
Concrete: The
“state of the art” 2008 NAHB Showcase House uses precast concrete walls, ceilings, floors and roof. Concrete construction
can be either good or bad. Concrete block walls can blow down in F3 windstorms
and become 32-pound flying death bombs at 120 mph. Poured-in-place, tilt-up,
and precast concrete construction has superior structural characteristics,
which may significantly reduce your homeowner’s insurance cost.
Concrete is a dense material, which makes it highly thermally conductive. Concrete can be used as excellent
“thermal mass” in Zero Energy DesignTM buildings, BUT it must have significant
insulation on the OUTSIDE to prevent it from having a negative effect on
building thermal performance. In many applications, 5+ inches of inexpensive
expanded polystyrene (EPS) is recommend OUTSIDE the walls, and 9+ inches ON TOP
of the roof concrete.
The NAHB house has about one inch of
insulation – only R-5 to protect the outside of the concrete walls from
temperature extremes. In the summer, the outside air heats up the dense concrete
thermal mass. This then radiates heat into the house long after the sun goes
down.
The precast concrete WALLS on this
house have an embedded 2-inch-thick layer of EPS, which improves their thermal
performance somewhat. The 3-inches of concrete on the outside of the embedded
EPS still acts as negative thermal mass (degrading thermal performance), but
the 3-inches of expensive precast concrete on the INSIDE of the (insufficient 2-inch) EPS inside the wall
panels does help improve thermal performance.
One of the HUGE PROBLEMS with this
“innovative” precast concrete construction system was that IT TOOK A YEAR TO
BUILD the outside of the 2008 NAHB Showcase Model
(where normal construction is about 2 months for the exterior envelope). Please
take time right now to look at their biweekly construction photos at:
www.buildersshow.com/Home/Page.aspx?pageID=416
//216.53.188.40/smartviewer/viewer/viewproject.cfm
Pay particular attention to the
02/09/2006 photos. They show the precast floor panels that extend four feet
beyond the wall to support the overhangs WITH NO THERMAL BREAK!
Structural concrete must be dense. It
is therefore highly conductive thermally, as well as having high thermal mass.
The floors and roof of this terrible thermal design extend well past the
(poorly) insulated walls. This makes them act like large-area “cooling fins” in
the winter, and powerful conductive interior heating devices in the hot
We cannot imagine ANY idiot building
designers being so completely unaware of their own EXTREME thermal errors.
Architects apparently receive almost NO thermal design training. AND, their
Virulent Ignorance prevents them from learning after 3 decades of scientific
proof.
Truth or Consequences
My father was a successful research
scientist. I worked summers and the early part of my career, in a large,
successful, energy research lab. We had one important industry-standard patent.
Its royalties paid all of the expenses for 700 leading-edge energy research
scientists and engineers. Every innovation we came up with was pure profit for
our corporation. We developed many more valuable patents in our productive
environment. We had the creative freedom to do just about anything we wanted.
It was fertile ground, which helped me design my own 1979 Zero Energy Home, as
the price of conventional energy was escalating rapidly.
The R&D process usually requires
a lot of “trial and error.” Scientific method involves the proposal of
hypotheses and possible working theories, and then experiments that often
discover flaws in our creative thinking. My 1979 house was not perfect – I
learned many things that I used in my next Zero Energy DesignTM home in 1980 (the
Salt Box Chapter 10-12).
In our very-profitable energy research
lab, we were strongly encouraged to actively solicit, offer, appreciate, and
act on CONSTRUCTIVE criticism. It was
an EXTREMELY HEALTHY and productive think tank environment. (I still believe it
was the best in the world at one time.)
Honest scientists and leading-edge development
engineers must always seek the scientific truth, even if it disproves their own
hypothetical theories. It is much better to learn that a suggested theory is
wrong, than to proceed on false assumptions. One of the things that scientists
love the most is to discover something important that is COUNTERINTUITIVE.
Scientists are trained to publish our discoveries, both good AND bad, so that
others can learn from our experiences, and accelerate humanity’s progress
toward solving the many challenging problems before us.
In stark contrast, I have discovered
that most of the rest of the world does
NOT seek or publish the unvarnished truth. I’ve worked with MANY bad Fortune
500 CEO’s and government managers. They tend to reward good news, and PUNISH
BAD NEWS.
This trains their subordinates to cover up the bad things, which PREVENTS them
from being corrected until it is far too late.
A bad Commander In Chief does NOT want voters to know that his war plan has
failed.
Tobacco companies successfully covered up the health impact of their deadly
products for many decades, while receiving subsidies from corrupt politicians.
Pharmaceutical companies often hide the fact that their newest billion-dollar drug
is killing thousands of people.
The introduction of television news coverage to the
In the successful energy research lab
that I “grew up” in, scientists received significant monetary rewards for
publishing the details about FAILED research projects. This information helped
others avoid subtle pitfalls, so we progressed more rapidly toward our desired
goals.
Most corporate public relations and
marketing departments have a strong NEGATIVE incentive to publish information
about problems and mistakes their organization has made. How many people really
understand that the “anti-depressant” they have been prescribed is documented
to be only 30% effective, and in some cases directly causes suicidal
tendencies. Politicians also have very a strong motive to cover up the negative
truth for decades. Religious leader relied on false platitudes to convince
followers that the Sun rotated around the Earth. The housing industry is
obviously NOT the only portion of our Virulently Ignorant society that is
incapable of learning from its many major mistakes (the unavoidable consequence of intentionally
covering up the truth).
What about the 2008 NAHB Showcase
House? Do YOU think the NAHB will publish the many highly-predictable-and-avoidable
errors that they obviously made, and the 25 million ZED opportunities that that
have been arrogantly opposed for Three Decades? – NOT VERY LIKELY. The NAHB
will probably scrutinize this potentially-helpful ZED critique of their
Showcase Home, looking for the smallest typographical error, and magnify it way
out of proportion to discredit the messenger, while ignoring the ZED message -
Standard practice for all virulently ignorant non-learning entities.
The point of this confrontation message
is that non-learning behavior is precisely WHY the architecture and building
industry has been such a backward environment that uselessly continues to waste
70% to 90% of the energy consumed by modern buildings. The scientific PROOF
that near-Zero Energy Buildings have existed for three decades, and that most
architects and builders haven’t a clue how to design them, is being
intentionally covered up by industry organizations and government agencies that
are directly assigned to improve the design and construction of today’s
inefficient buildings (like the 2008 NAHB Showcase).
Consider the terrible mosquito
problem created by the very bad use of imported alien noxious South American
pampas grass - one block from historic
If your corporate goal is to send the
message that “We only do good things”,
and you try to cover up, or merely ignore, the many mistakes that you do make,
then you actually wind up drawing attention to the fact that you make many more
mistakes than you are willing to admit. This is precisely the case with the
2008 NAHB Official Showcase House.
One thing particularly upsets us
about this ugly house. There is a government agency that is assigned to help
improve building practices in
They published a very one-sided view of all of the good things that this
project was supposed to do. They
focused way to much on vendor products like its Energy Star windows and doors,
high-SEER air conditioners, and the 2.4 kW (inadequate, poorly designed)
photovoltaic system on the roof.
Their extreme bias in accomplishing their assigned goals and trying to promote
the false view that “We only do good things” caused them to completely fail to
mention even one of its many serious design flaws, like the bad three-story open
loft design, high percentage of western and northern glass area, lack of a
thermal break in the concrete overhangs, 71% incandescent lighting, or high
natural gas CO2 contribution to man-made Global Warming. That very
one-sided biased document is still embarrassingly displayed on their website
today.
Every intelligent scientist knows
that innovation involves trial and error. When a one-sided “We only do good
things” presentation is made, it obviously is quite biased and covering up the
bad side. Scientists KNOW that if they omit mistakes that they made, and
lessons that they learned, they will lose credibility among their disappointed
peers. This serious intentional cover up, is why we at ZED took the time to
document some of their blatant omissions about this NAHB disaster project. Society
cannot fix our many problems until we first admit them.
Every effort involves both good and
bad things – To accelerate progress, they BOTH must be revealed. In order to
learn from our own mistakes, and the mistakes of others, we must first
understand things like WHY there are so many mosquitoes around the NAHB
Showcase House. A major portion of scientific progress is understanding what is
wrong with the world today, so we can concentrate on finding solutions.
We do NOT want to just run around
putting out fires (like using poisons to kill mosquitoes). We need to
understand the SOURCE of the problem
and correct it (like eliminating the places where mosquitoes and rats love to breed
and feed).
Are you willing to become one of the
first General Contractors in your area to reject the NAHB-recommended foolish building
practices (and three-decade arrogant virulent ignorance skepticism of Zero
Energy DesignTM)? Will YOU break away from the regressive NAHB business-as-usual
status quo, and begin to build government-encouraged Zero Energy Buildings
often and well?
If you do, you will receive more
free positive publicity than you have ever gotten before.
Inform us that you are committed to following our strict ZED building
standards. We’ll monitor and feature your high-quality work, and refer potential
ZED custom homebuyers to you.
We do the Holistic Systems Imagineering, and YOU make the Stunning ZED Magic
happen.
Some uninformed architects,
who do not have a clue about ZED, incorrectly suggest that a Zero Energy Home
is little more than a (thoughtless) conventional hooue with a photovoltaic
system on the roof. The poorly implemented 2.4 kW photovoltaic system on the 2008
Showcase House roof does NOT begin to eliminate its utility bills. It powers
the refrigerator part time, and little else.
The NAHB Showcase House
demonstrates how very WRONG that common opinion about ZED is. ZED is much more
than PV on the rooftop. 70% to 90% of
ZED is
ZED sez: Stay far away from
clueless architects who do not know the precise seasonal path of the sun, and
the 47-degree difference between where it will exactly be in the summer and
winter. If your architect has never LIVED in a Zero Energy Home, then your
architect probably doesn’t have a clue about energy economics, natural convection
warm air rising, wise investments of time and money, or the very important ZED
issues that are involved.
Larry Hartweg designed,
built, and LIVED in his own luxury ZED home with a large year-round indoor
swimming pool in 1979 BEFORE he designed another one for someone else in 1980. Larry
had the unique advantage of being a Second Generation Energy Research Scientist,
and having his creative energy saving ideas peer reviewed by other expert research
scientists in the large successful energy research lab where he was employed.
He instrumented his own home, monitored the difference between predictions and
reality, and iteratively refined the science of ZED Holistic Systems
Engineering, which is documented throughout this unique comprehensive ZED book.
Hartweg actively solicits,
appreciates, and responds quickly to all constructive
criticism about his unprecedented Zero Energy DesignTM. It is arguable the Number
One Solution, to the Number One problem facing the world today.
In Hartweg’s own first 1979
Zero Energy DesignTM home, the interior staircase had a door to prevent the
predictable serious natural convection air flow problem that the inept, clueless,
architect designed into the 2008 NAHB Official Showcase House three-story open
loft.
Larry’s 1979 clothes dryer was isolated from the air conditioned portion of the
house, etc.
Is YOUR architect a
bald-headed barber telling you how to keep from losing your hair?
DOES YOUR ARCHITECT PAY UTILITY BILLS? Is
your architect part of the SOURCE
of the largest part of our modern American Energy Crisis?
American Buildings uselessly
waste much more energy than Transportation OR Industry.
www.AIA.org/SiteObjects/files/architectsandclimatechange.pdf
70% to 90% of the energy
being consumed by buildings is being wasted unproductively, because of Virulent
Ignorance and terrible modern architecture and construction practices.
The many specific details permeate the pages of this comprehensive ZED book.
0.4 ZED Summary for Concerned Architects
and Building Designers
The Grossly Inefficient, Unsustainable, AMERICAN DREAM HOME
Since
the housing explosion that followed the end of World War II, American
Architects have been spectacularly successful at convincing naive homebuyers
to WANT the most inefficient energy-wasting possible features in their houses
that have ever been invented by humans.
It really makes no rational sense at all.
Architects have no vested interest in people paying high utility bills. You do not get commissions from energy or power companies, so why do you continue to encourage your clients to unnecessarily waste so very much energy and construction cost? Why do you work so hard to make the waste of energy so attractive and universally popular to almost everyone? Consider some of these endless specifics:
(1) Dark roofs create extremely hot attics in locations with high air-conditioning bills. A dark roof surface will get 190o F, while a white roof may be only 120o F. The high heat from the summer sun makes all upstairs rooms hotter than in a Zero Energy DesignTM Home. Many housing additions now foolishly REQUIRE energy inefficient dark roofs. Years ago they also insanely required fire-hazard wooden roofs.
(2) Many exterior wall corners increase exterior heat transfer surface area and make the interior thermally less comfortable with uneven temperature control. They greatly increase construction cost, utility bills, atmospheric pollution, Global Warming, wind turbulence heat transfer, and windstorm damage potential. Homebuyers now consider less-expensive energy-efficient homes with simple exteriors unattractive. Architects have trained uninformed homebuyers to actually PREFER the appearance of the WORST possible uncomfortable expensive energy wasting design.
(3) Far more square feet and air conditioning exterior surface area than reasonable occupants need to be comfortable. This obviously results in much higher utility bills for the unused space of homeowners who care nothing about their ongoing utility bills, or the environment. This wasted space not only costs hundreds of thousands of original investment dollars, but over 30 years, the energy costs can be more than the purchase price – Not a problem if you care nothing about your financial future. Since the post World War II baby boomers were born, the average square footage of an American home has risen from 1100 square feet to over 2,400, and utility bills have increased more than ten fold. Is this trend sustainable in the future?
(4) Indiscriminate use of windows on all sides and the roof of the house. Window design is a (or THE) major reason for high utility bills. Popular skylights are a solar furnace in the summer and a major heat loser in the winter when warm air rises. West facing glass can require 3,000 BTU of air-conditioning PER SQUARE FOOT per day. Architects don’t have a clue why or how to design a gorgeous house with only south facing glass that provides natural light and panoramic views for every room.
(5) Inefficient electric lighting costs five to ten times more than modern lighting techniques. Fluorescents, LED’s and even electroluminescence now offer endless low-energy attractive moods and automated full-color-spectrum lighting alternatives.
(6) Poorly-insulated single shell design creates a high temperature differential (and therefore high heat transfer and utility bills) across highly conductive windows, doors, walls and ceiling. Two small delta T’s are MUCH more efficient than one large delta T in an inefficient American dream home. (Chapter Eleven and Twelve).
(7) Fireplaces draw conditioned air out of the home 24/7/365. A light breeze over the top of the chimney create a strong vacuum. When they are lit, high volume warm air rising greatly increases whole-house HEAT LOSS. Fireplaces (wood or gas) badly pollute the planet and draw in unconditioned dirty air through every construction crack, windows, doors and other air vents. When you go to sleep with a fireplace burning you can’t even close the damper.
(8) Poorly designed laundry rooms cause the clothes dryer to draw large volumes of conditioned air out of your home for an hour per load, increasing utility bill just like opening a window and putting a fan in it, while your air conditioning is running full time. Outside replacement air brings in dust, dust mites, pollen, mold, microorganisms, allergens, termite treatment deadly toxins, construction materials, bits of insulation, and invites crawling things like ants, cockroaches, and rodents. (Chapter Seven)
(9) Inefficient appliances dominate American homes. They may be shiny and attractive with cute features, but many of today’s lower cost appliances waste five to fifteen time more expensive energy than superior Energy Star® rated appliances, which are even being subsidized by our government. Saving a $100 on an appliance can cost you thousands.
(10)
Poorly designed interior airflow makes many uncomfortable rooms have
high utility bills. Forced air fans that blow against glass accelerate heat
transfer year round. Warm air rises like a hot air balloon, or smoke up a
chimney. Two story open spaces are always hotter in the upper area year round.
Lots of glass (especially facing the wrong direction in a single shell design)
makes this problem much worse. Most people have been trained by architects to
think this energy inefficient lunacy is attractive. IT IS NOT!
Notice the architect-designed built-in TV in full sunlight in the above UGLY photo, and the lack of perpendicular seating facing it. This produces asymmetric sore neck muscles. How often will this expensive, poorly designed, poorly-decorated, uncomfortable room be used by the thoughtless people who buy this non-sustainable Global Warming energy disaster house? The incandescent ventilated ceiling lights waste energy and leak unconditioned air to the dark roof attic. The TWO ceiling fans greatly accelerate expensive heat transfer in all directions. WHAT could be worse?
Throughout this book we will discuss hundreds of similar dumb things that are commonly done by architects, which uninformed homebuyers DEMAND today.
We are not going to pull any punches
against conventional energy inefficient architects here. Architecture
Confrontational Innovation is MANDATED, to bring about the rapid changes
required to ELIMINATE ENERGY BILLS, and quickly solve the devastating American
Energy Crisis. Poorly-trained “Johnny Come Lately” architects who FALSELY claim
that they understand energy efficiency when they clearly do NOT, are THE source
of what is wrong with our inefficient energy wasting conventional American
homes being built badly today.
You cannot break any destructive bad
habit if you do not clearly first admit that it exists.
This ZED book demonstrates Critical Thinking Skills, and is as Constructive as
we possibly can be, in speaking frankly about the current negative architecture
situation. Poorly-educated American Architects have got to STOP DENYING that
they are THE primary source of our building energy crisis. ZED is here to help you understand, so here
goes:
YOUR architecture university professors probably didn’t have a clue about the Zero Energy DesignTM (ZED) principles and practices that were scientifically demonstrated in pragmatic cost-effective homes in 1979, and clearly documented in our National Energy Exposition ZED presentations, books, house plans, and construction specifications since 1980.
YOU have a great deal of unlearning bad habits, and relearning good ZED practices, IF you want to catch up quickly. From an energy perspective, your profession has done things very wrong for many decades. Your uninformed professors and peers support what you’ve done.
See Chapter Six for a quick
summary of things not to do, and Chapter Seven (Laundry) for a classic example
of one of your most significant pervasive floor plan design errors that not
only is extremely wasteful of expensive energy, but also very unhealthy. No
compromise allowed – BAD ENERGY ARCHITECTURE can NOT be tolerated in any Zero
Energy Home.
Roof angled glass and skylights are two more
examples among thousands of modern energy inefficient architectural design and specification
errors. YOU and your peers are the direct and immediate source of many of
today’s worst business-as-usual building energy crisis abuses. Your very-bad
traditional design and construction advice to buyers and builders is worse than
counterproductive. Your industry’s literature is loaded with bad examples of
what NOT to do. When you try to improve energy efficiency, you use the WRONG
evaluation criteria to judge what is good versus what is bad to include in an
energy efficient design.
For example, the square footage of
exterior wall space is a measure of the undesirable heat transfer
into-or-out-of a house during summer and winter uncomfortable temperature
extremes. The smallest surface area of a home would be a smooth circle. The
easiest to build with standard materials and construction techniques is a
simple rectangle.
Architects are traditionally trained
by their artistic professors to greatly increase the surface area of a home
with many complex cuts and jags, which are supposed to improve the “street
appeal” of the conventional home. This common practice INCREASES the design
complexity, construction material requirements, labor costs, and GREATLY
INCREASES TURBULENT AIR FLOW (wind chill, etc.) AROUND CORNERS, AND VERY
UNDESIRABLE HEAT TRANSFER THROUGH THE UNNECESSARILY LARGE EXTERIOR WALLS (with
the potential for significantly increased catastrophic windstorm damage, even
leading to many otherwise avoidable human deaths).
Because unnecessarily increased
excess surface area has always been standard bad-habit architectural practice
for decades, it is assumed by YOU to be the best thing for a creative architect
to do. Your profession has trained your customers to expect (and even pay more
for) homes with higher-than-necessary exterior surface area and unnecessarily
expensive building corners.
When considering future housing
innovations, your profession’s evaluation criteria include the way you proactively
desire inefficient high exterior surface area, with NO INTELLIGENT
CONSIDERATION OF ITS HIGHER INITIAL COST, RISK OF WIND DAMAGE, AND LONG-TERM
ENERGY INEFFICIENCY (costing your customers tens of thousands of dollars in
higher lifetime total cost of ownership).
Here is one hilarious (but very sad)
example of allowing the source of the problem to judge how to solve it. Albert
Einstein said: “The thinking which created today’s problems is insufficient
to solve them.” His profound statement certainly applies HERE:
According to the U.S. Department of
Energy, Oakridge National Laboratory report on the thermal performance of a
building’s envelope design, the NUMBER OF CORNERS on a building is
directly related to how well, or how poorly, it will perform. A basic
rectangular floor plan performs best with only 4 CORNERS. A “U” shaped building
performs worse with 8 CORNERS. The above outrageously stupid “contest winner”
has 21 CORNERS!
Traditional architects are trained as
artists, NOT as innovative thermal engineers.
YOU focus on visual appeal, NOT operational efficiency or construction cost
minimization. Your architecture
professors have little or no knowledge of critical energy issues (like adding
undesirable surface area to a home, or how to design a laundry room). Do your
professors pay utility bills? How about the “leaders” of the American Institute
of Architects?
In a recent “Energy-Efficient Florida
Home Design Competition” the interesting winner (pictured above) has an
irregular exterior with more than twice the undesirable heat transfer
exterior wall surface area of a less-expensive more-efficient rectangular
floor plan. You have successfully taught your clients that efficient simplicity
is ugly. ZED’s goal is to teach them how wrong YOUR profession has always been.
Our ZED homes are gorgeous!
The conventional “group think” judges
in the above energy efficient home design contest were obviously uninformed
(brain dead) architects. These energy efficiency judges are the
architecture professors who teach their students that it is GOOD to do this
kind of really dumb design. The fact that this terrible energy efficient floor
plan won an architect’s “Energy
Efficient Home Design Competition” shows exactly WHY the architects who created
today’s residential energy crisis can NOT possibly participate in designing or
implementing a REASONABLE solution to the problems that they alone created
themselves!
Don’t expect your university
architecture professors, or the American Institute of Architects, to be of much
assistance in the radical reeducation that YOU need to undergo very quickly.
AIA is beginning to have a few
trivial token Johnny Come Lately Zero Energy Home workshops in places like
(mild climate, easy to do) California, but the very BEST of the AIA workshops
do not even begin to cover the many ZED principles and pragmatic practices
found in this comprehensive iteratively-refined ZED textbook, as you will soon
see.
Recent AIA energy workshops barely
cover simple subjects like: new building products, afterthought photovoltaic
systems, and minor energy efficiency improvements, such as
on-demand hot water heaters, improved-efficiency CONVENTIONAL heating and air
conditioning systems, and Energy Star appliances. These are trivial elements of
a naive energy reduction effort, but they are far from everything needed for a
well-designed Zero Energy Home.
Most AIA energy workshop attendees
return home to pretty much business-as-usual. They live in conventional homes
with very high energy bills, and only implement a few of these Zero Energy Home
things when they are forced to do so by a minority of well-informed potential
homebuyers. Architects certainly cannot appreciate or promote ZED concepts they
have never experienced and do NOT fully understand. When traditional architects
look at a well-designed ZED home, they often say: “Can’t we add more cuts and
jags to make it look a bit more interesting?” (snicker) Does this precisely
describe YOU?
The above is an energy efficient
compromise to those architects and homebuyers who demand more cut-and-jag
street appeal. This is the north side of a recommended Florida ZED home. It
seems interesting with multiple exterior offsets, but look more closely. The
offsets are mostly decorative (plus the rain protection of the front door of the
entry portico. The actual north side of the living quarters is essentially a
straight line – part of a large rectangle with near-minimum exterior surface
area. VERY DIFFERENT FROM THE STUPID HIGH SURFACE AREA CONTEST WINNER IN THE
PREVIOUS PHOTO.
There is a bit more northern glass
than we would like in a Zero Energy Home in a colder winter climate, but in
Central Florida, the Degree Day Heating Requirement is only 733 on average, and
wind chill is a relatively insignificant problem in this area (in stark contrast
to our 1979 ZED home where the Degree Day Heating Requirement was a much higher
3680).
ZED would prefer a bright white “cool
roof” for hot humid
This Systems Engineered Florida ZED
home looks good, and it follows most of our efficient shape guidelines. The
offsets make it cost a bit more than a plain rectangle, but custom homebuyers
like this type of familiar modern
This popular
This house has much less southern
glass than a colder climate Zero Energy Home.
The Degree Day Cooling requirement for
There is interesting landscaping and
a water feature in the back yard. Plants shade the west side, where there is NO
GLASS, to eliminate western afternoon solar gain. It is possible to make a ZED
home look like most desirable exterior styles, while still maintaining
important ZED architectural design patterns. We are not absolute on the plain
rectangle design pattern, but we do try to minimize exterior wall surface area,
and construction cost, while still delivering valuable street appeal.
A Revealing Examination for
Architects: What’s Wrong With This Picture?
Find everything you can that is
wrong with this picture. Jot down a few notes, and THEN
turn the page and compare your observations to our own. If you find more
obvious design flaws than we did, please let us know.
The well-known “energy
efficient” architect who designed this disaster features it prominently on the
first page of his website. His work is largely in the hot humid southern
This architect is a member of The U.S. Green Building Council, and provides services for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). Such titles must be very easy for terrible architects to receive.
I find it truly laughable that such
uninformed architects can sell this type of very-bad energy architecture to
their clients as an “improvement” over conventional architecture. I cannot
imagine that ANYONE would be proud of the above design. Take a very close look.
1. This is a single-shell
large-glass-area sunspace in the interior living quarters of the home. It
creates one large temperature differential across many square feet of glass and
window frame material – like giant uncomfortable energy-wasting holes in the
thermal envelope of the home. These windows MAY be poor-performance high
emissivity glass with common metal frames. Very expensive high-technology
windows would still not solve the many thermal problems of this extremely bad
architecture.
2. There are two perpendicular walls
with a large number of square feet of exterior glass. This will be very bad in
almost all homes, all climates, all locations, and all seasons, regardless of
how the house is oriented. This picture appears to have been taken on a summer
afternoon, when the sun is at high altitude, and its azimuth is perpendicular
to the west facing (right side) windows. The south facing (left side) glass
would be useful for some winter day solar gain, but ALL of the glass would be
thermally bad on winter nights and all day in the summer, since there is no
“thermal buffer zone” (discussed in detail later) between the large glass area
and the outside temperature extremes. The diurnal (24-hour) interior temperature
swings on a winter day would surely range from uncomfortably hot to
uncomfortable cold at night. High heating and air conditioning bills would be
required year round, summer and winter.
3. We see the strong sunbeams that come right through the sheer drapes, despite the large western overhang. West side overhangs are pretty much useless on summer afternoons in hot humid climates. Loose-edged sheer drapes do almost nothing to improve the thermal performance of all this inefficient outside glass (summer and winter). There is no insulating drape provided. Aesthetically, the individual south sheers do not match the western sheer.
4. This is an upstairs room (a
problem for the disabled) with an open staircase. Warm air rises by natural
convection, like a hot air balloon or smoke up a chimney, and makes this the
most uncomfortable, hottest room in the house summer and winter, even if it had
NO windows. Starting with the hottest air rising from downstairs, the large
upstairs glass area makes this room a really unpleasant solar furnace, even
hotter than if the downstairs was the only heat source. (The only thing that
might make this room a bit worse would be roof-angled glass.)
5. The photographer (foolishly)
turned on the inefficient incandescent light, which in this photo is worse than
just plain silly. The high direct sunlight glare the this interior living space
is already way too much brightness. The iris of your eyes would have difficulty
moving from very bright to shaded portions of the room. It would take minutes
to adjust to the very high contrast internal and external views.
6. The ceiling fan is turning rapidly
(see the blur) with no one in the room. This increases turbulent airflow across
the hot ceiling, disrupts the insulating laminar air layers, and accelerates
hot-attic-to-ceiling downward heat transfer. The attic probably does not have
much room for air ventilation, due to the steep angle of the vaulted ceiling.
The ceiling fan also creates turbulence behind the sheer drapes, greatly
increasing undesirable heat flow through the large south and west windows
summer and winter.
7. From an interior decorating
perspective, the one small plant is overwhelmed by the size of this sunspace.
One (or more) large colorful item(s) might help the visual appeal of the room.
8. This room’s white on white on
white, with bright sunlight, is WAY TOO STARK, and irritating to the eye.
Sitting with the sun in your face and talking to a guest could make you squint
a lot and cause painful eyestrain headaches. There would be minimal privacy at
night with no opaque drape. When the room light is on at night, people outside
could see right in.
9. The only interesting colors in
this room are the ceiling and floor wood grains. This makes guests look up or
down, without a focal point near the middle of the normal frame of view.
10. The loose fitting long skirts on
the couches look like cheap slip covers that don’t fit very well. White
upholstery is quite difficult to keep clean. The room is laid out with limited
functional usage options. All you can do here is walk through, or sit. It lacks
ZED “Lifestyle Decorating.”
11. The odd sized upper south windows
are expensive custom windows made at higher cost in low volume, just for this
unique wall. The limited value view through them is only of the sky. Their
height means that the warmest sunspace air will rise by natural convection, and
be next to them for a high conductive winter temperature differential. These
windows will be the source of a lot of undesirable heat transfer summer and
winter, and require expensive heating and cooling bills year round.
12. The nice large exterior trees are
obviously not close enough to provide shade on hot summer days. In the winter,
the southern trees would reduce the solar gain potential from low-angled sun
morning and evening. This is always bad summer and winter.
Did you see what we saw when this
picture first slapped us in the face, on an inept “energy efficient”
architect’s home page?
We feel that analytical examination
exercises like this one will help poorly-trained architects (with clueless
university professors) to begin to recognize the traditional errors made by
their unaware profession that they have listened to in the past, and built
their career around. Just because even dumber people pay you good money, does
NOT mean that you have a clue about what is the right thing to do.
You have much to learn about the
important ways of ZED grasshopper. (smile)
Today’s uninformed architects may leave tens of thousands of dollars of energy incentive program money on the table, hurting their homebuyers, and working against what our government is trying to encourage in all new homes. (How very sad.) They may design very bad university buildings, which will cause irreversible permanent brain damage to countless future students for decades to come.
Almost none of YOU realize that there is so much more
that can be done to completely eliminate the need for CONVENTIONAL heating and
air conditioning systems. You don’t know how to add very inexpensive large
beautiful south facing glass walls that eliminate the many problems of the
above picture, or how to integrate a stunning solarium into to the aesthetics
of every room of a large home, AND eliminate energy bills.
Most business-as-usual experienced
architects are very skeptical about the “new” (25 year old) ZED things that
their professors ignored, rejected long ago, and STILL do not appreciate or
understand. Such poorly-trained professionals lead their less-informed buyers
and builders away from what was proven effective decades ago, and subsidized by
the Carter administration, saying: “Maybe we should wait until the technology
gets better, decades in the future.” Worse yet, they claim to be energy
efficiency experts, and sell stupid inefficient designs to customers, who get a
bad taste in the wallet when the energy bills arrive, or they are forced to
live in an uncomfortable expensive home (like the one pictured above).
If twenty years ago you told yourself
that the Zero Energy solution would be ten years in the future, then twenty
years from now you will probably STILL think it will be ten more years in the
future. This kind of stinkin’ thinkin’ makes sense to people who refuse to let
hard facts interfere with their inaccurate mental misconceptions. To such
unjustifiably-arrogant accredited curmudgeons ZED sez: YOU should be convicted
for felonious high crimes against humanity. (smile)
It takes an intelligent adaptable
architect to admit the many misuse-of-energy mistakes by
conventionally-educated architects of the past, and find the large amount of
time necessary to learn what has transpired while they were snoozing for the
last 25 years. Your peers may say that you are doing the customary things that
you were taught (long ago) in school by “wise” professors. But, in today’s Zero
Energy DesignTM world, your traditional architecture skills are very obsolete,
and YOU are damaging
Most of all, ZED is here to help
poorly trained architects like YOU. This book is your first step toward
your radical energy efficiency reeducation. ZED abundant energy homes are NOT a
matter of adding more insulation, or a photovoltaic system to a house with too
much surface area and windows in the wrong place.
We offer significant training programs for those more intelligent and innovative architects with a thirst for state-of-the-art Zero Energy DesignTM knowledge. We will be glad to COLLABORATE with you on a few “get-started, hands-on mentor projects.” Our combined experience should be (1 + 1 = 3) synergistic. We would love to hear from you soon.
Larry Hartweg of ZeroEnergyDesign.com
has been selected by the U.S. Department of Energy, Oakridge National
Laboratory to present his decades of accumulated ZED knowledge at a
leading-edge workshop at the prestigious 2007 International Buildings X
Conference (something that has only happened once every 3 years since
1977).
If you are still NOT ready to
radically reeducate yourself immediately about ZED, may we suggest having us
design a small retirement Zero Energy Home for you soon? (chuckle)
As with a bushel basket of unsorted
apples, some are rotten, most are mediocre and a few are outstanding. So it is
with the AIA. They have a few outsanding individuals who seem to have their act
together, and are aligned with the long-term objectives of ZED. The AIA
Committee On The Environment (COTE) has a few intelligent individuals who have
clearly articulated excellent Sustainable Design goals that ZED strongly
supports. (The major problem of course is that the vast majority of the AIA
is unfamiliar with the
http://www.aia.org/SiteObjects/files/architectsandclimatechange.pdf
“The biggest source of emissions and
energy consumption both in this country and around the globe: buildings.”
“76% of all power plant generated
electricity is used just to operate buildings.”
“The Building Sector, as the major U.S. and global source of demand for energy and materials that produce by-product greenhouse gases, is poised to fuel the world's rush toward climate change.” (Which may soon lead to the flooding of major coastal cities around the world, unprecedented catastrophic man-made weather disasters, and the displacement of 100 million people currently living near sea level.)
“Architects know that buildings can
be designed to operate with less than half the energy of today’s average
The above AIA formal position
statement makes it undeniably clear that THE AIA KNOWS THAT ARCHITECTS ALONE
ARE THE PRIMARY SOURCE OF THE BULK OF TODAY’S AMERICAN ENERGY CRISIS, AND
GLOBAL WARMING. So what does the AIA plan to do to correct the huge problems
that Architects have directly created throughout the world?
Here are the slow-moving AIA’s goals
for 2030 (half a century AFTER Jimmy Carter tried hard to get them to do what
was clearly proven in the late 1970’s)!
http://www.aia.org/nwsltr_cote.cfm?pagename=cote_a_200608_define
“Sustainable design is a
collaborative process that involves thinking ecologically - studying systems,
relationships, and interactions - in order to design in ways that remove rather
than contribute stress from systems. The sustainable design process
holistically and creatively connects land use and design at the regional level
and addresses community design and mobility; site ecology and water use;
place-based energy generation, performance, and security; materials and
construction; light and air; bioclimatic design; and issues of long life and
loose fit. True sustainable design is beautiful, humane, socially appropriate,
and restorative.”
AIA /
1) Sustainable Design Intent & Innovation
Sustainable design is rooted in a mindset that
understands humans as an integral part of nature and responsible for
stewardship of natural systems. Sustainable design begins with a connection to
personal values and embraces the ecological, economic, and social circumstances
of a project. Architectural expression itself comes from this intent,
responding to the specifics region, watershed, community, neighborhood, and
site.
2) Regional / Community Design &
Connectivity
Sustainable design recognizes the
unique cultural and natural character of place, promotes regional and community
identity, contributes to public space and community interaction, and seeks to
reduce auto travel and parking requirements and promote alternative transit
strategies.
3) Land Use & Site Ecology
Sustainable design reveals how
natural systems can thrive in the presence of human development, relates to
ecosystems at different scales, and creates, re-creates, or preserves open
space, permeable groundscape, or on-site ecosystems.
4) Bioclimatic Design
Sustainable design conserves
resources and optimizes human comfort through connections with the flows of
bioclimatic region, using place-based design to benefit from free energies—sun,
wind, and water. In footprint, section, orientation, and massing, sustainable
design responds to site, sun path, breezes, and seasonal and daily cycles.
5) Light & Air
Sustainable design creates a
comfortable and healthy interior environment while providing abundant daylight
and fresh air. Daylight, lighting design, natural ventilation, improved indoor
air quality, and views, enhance the vital human link to nature.
6) Water Cycle
Recognizing water as an essential resource,
sustainable design conserves water supplies, manages site water and drainage,
and capitalizes on renewable site sources using water-conserving strategies,
fixtures, appliances, and equipment.
7) Energy Flows & Energy Future
Rooted in passive strategies (with outstanding
demonstrations by Hartweg since 1979), sustainable design contributes to energy
conservation by reducing or eliminating the need for lighting and mechanical
heating and cooling. Smaller and more efficient building systems reduce
pollution and improve building performance and comfort. Controls and
technologies, lighting strategies, and on-site renewable energy should be
employed with long-term impacts in mind.
8) Materials, Building Envelope,
& Construction
Using a life cycle lens, selection of
materials and products can conserve resources, reduce the impacts of harvest /
manufacture / transport, improve building performance, and secure human health
and comfort. High-performance building envelopes improve comfort and reduce
energy use and pollution. Sustainable design promotes recycling through the
life of the building.
9) Long Life, Loose Fit
Sustainable design seeks to optimize
ecological, social, and economic value over time. Materials, systems, and
design solutions enhance versatility, durability, and adaptive reuse potential.
Sustainable design begins with right-sizing and foresees future adaptations.
10) Collective Wisdom & Feedback
Loops
Sustainable design recognizes that
the most intelligent design strategies evolve over time through shared
knowledge within a large community. Lessons learned from the integrated design
process and from the site and building themselves over time should contribute
to building performance, occupant satisfaction, and design of future projects.
EXCELLENT GOALS – Well articulated -
THE IRONIC PROBLEM IS that the vast majority of AIA members have NOT learned
the energy innovation lessons that were presented to them countless time since
1978, when Jimmy Carter began to subsidize them in the first place!
The above COTE 2030 future goals
(with no plan to accomplish them soon) stands as a
bald header barber telling us how to keep from losing our hair. How much are
YOUR energy bills today?
Look at the energy consumption of the
homes that AIA members live in. Most have high utility bills. Some
custom-designed AIA residences (with dramatic skylights, sweeping glass that
ignores orientation, and poor construction details) have HIGHER THAN
CONVENTIONAL UTILITY BILLS. Should such an ignorant architect be allowed to
design anyone’s home?
ZED has been ready for 27 years to
help architects correct the many devastating, gigantic errors that their AIA
Architecture University Professors taught them. ZED can quickly help AIA
members learn how to accomplish their own unrealized COTE Sustainable Design
goals, in the shortest amount of time possible. AIA membership lacks any sense
of urgency, or specific measurable goals, to implement even what was well-known
in 1980 before 2030!
Lofty unachievable AIA position
papers don’t count – Deeds do. Show me the architects who refuse to design
anything without comprehensive ZED. Show me the architects who pay zero utility
bills in their own homes and offices. Show me the sustainable AIA Zero Energy
Home designs, commercial-and-industrial buildings, and cost-effective
comprehensive community plans that eliminate ALL greenhouse gas production,
reverse Global Warming, abruptly terminate the current American Energy Crisis,
and provide a comfortable, healthy, affordable, sustainable place for life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Only THEN should anyone trust any architect
to design anything for them at all. Doing it is easy. Getting architects to
understand and practice what was proven to be superior sustainable design in
1980, is very, very hard. AIA architects’ resistance to zero energy innovation
is amazingly high. Their profession was created millennia ago by radical
innovators. Today’s architectural practitioners seem to be skeptical
shortsighted curmudgeons. Please prove me wrong, very soon! Learn from the
many errors of your peers.
Let ZED help you up your steep future learning curve. Show us your best
success.
0.5 Invitation for Energy
Research Scientists, Engineers, and Students
We of the ZED Group feel closest to
the open-minded way scientists and engineers deal with solving challenging
complex problems. We hope you will appreciate the decades of research,
knowledge gathering, and practical experience that ZED has accumulated. Unless
you have the time to stay on the forefront of the work being done on advancing
ZED, we believe that you will find a lot of valuable information in this book.
We are most proud of the
state-of-the-art suggestions that we offer in Chapter Twelve to
cost-effectively use solar energy to cool buildings in hot humid climates like
As an energy research
scientist or engineer, you may also enjoy our Chapter Three discussion of
Quantum Physics, Unified Field Theory, and what we may soon discover when the
CERN Large Hadron Collider becomes fully operational in late 2007. Our future
energy potential is extremely exciting.
Our ZED Holistic Systems Engineering has been eliminating
energy bills for 27 years. Clearly, our solutions have been proven to work very
well, and we have iteratively refined our design heuristics for decades. As
with any science, there will always be much room for further improvements in
the future. We enthusiastically invite your suggestions and constructive
criticism. Perhaps we can collaborate and have a synergistic effect for our
joint efforts. Please let us know of your interest and specific goals.
Larry Hartweg ZEDmaster@ZeroEnergyDesign.com
Non-Learning Entities
“They’ll never learn. You can’t teach
a sneech.” - Dr. Seuss
My father was a successful energy research
scientist. He often joked and reminded me that half the people around me are
below average (drivers, workers, politicians, friends, etc.). They cannot
imagine, do not understand, and in some cases actively oppose, the very science
and innovation education, which has the potential to benefit them the most.
Animals and humans are creatures of
habit. Our previous habits (good or bad) cause us to tend to do the same thing
tomorrow that we did yesterday, while we naively hope that things will
magically get better. Bad habits must be overcome to bring about change and
innovation. Future plans and objectives must include the time and effort
(training, motivation, emotional intelligence, etc.) necessary to offset
natural resistance to change.
In 1513, Niccolo Machiavelli wrote:
"There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor
more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new system. For the initiator
has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old system,
and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new one."
The
A century later our non-learning nation fought a devastating Civil War because
half of our people refused to accept the constitutional foundation of our union.
Another century later,
we fought terrible race riots because conservative supremacists denied
constitutional rights to minorities. The battles continue to this day, based on
color of skin, cultural heritage, and language.
In 1956, Marion King Hubbert accurately
predicted the peak and decline of American oil production in 1971. He was correct
to the exact year. As our oil imports escalated, OPEC learned how to manipulate
oil prices in
In 1978, Jimmy Carter provided solar
energy tax credits. Since then, hundreds of thousands of new homes have
demonstrated the scientific principles used in today’s Zero Energy Homes, yet
non-learning construction contractors have IGNORED this proven, cost-effective
technology in about 25 million new buildings since then. Once again, this is
nothing less than SPECTACULAR
NON-LEARNING BEHAVIOR.
“Old ideas give way slowly; for they
are more than abstract logical forms and categories. They are habits,
predispositions, deeply ingrained attitudes of aversion and preference.”
- John Dewey (Father of Modern
Education)
“These days, the problem isn't how to
innovate; it's how to get society to adopt the good ideas that already exist.” -
Douglas Englebart
Significant Change Takes Place Very Slowly
In evolutionary terms, significant
DNA “survival of the fittest” change can take tens of thousands, or millions,
of Earth years. The human brain is capable of changing significantly in a
single lifetime, but significant change in human behavior seldom ever happens.
Most significant changes take at
least fifteen years – the length of one generation. (Such changes will surely
happen, as recent legal-and-illegal immigrants become the MAJORITY in the
Another way to look at significant generational
change is that “Change takes place one retirement (or death) at a time.” “Perhaps
the only CURE for declining business-as-usual thinking is FORMALDEHYDE.”
“A new scientific truth does NOT
triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather
because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is
familiar with it.” - Max Planck (Creator of the Photon Theory, and close
association of Albert Einstein, who proved the Photon Theory in 1905 and used
it in developing his own Theory of Relativity: e=mc2)
This is true in large corporations
and government agencies. “Groupthink” and the intimidation of bad senior
managers block the flow of valuable creative ideas. “Faced with changing one's
mind, or proving that there is no need to do so, most people get busy on the
proof.”
- John Kenneth Galbraith
“The vast majority of human beings
dislike and even dread all notions with which they are not familiar. Hence it
comes about that at their first appearance innovators have always been derided
as fools and madmen.” - Aldous Huxley
When business-as-usual is failing,
and a major innovation is required, a new idea that is exactly what is needed
will always
appear to be WHACKO, when viewed by
mediocre minds that only understand conventional evaluation criteria. The
thinking that created today’s problems is almost NEVER able to solve them
(hence the need for FORMALDEHYDE OR
very rare people with flexible, agile, open minds with critical thinking skills.
“New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.” - John Locke
A recent CEO of American Airlines had
a nasty habit of rewarding those who brought him good news and punishing those
who brought him bad news that he did not agree with.
His senior managers soon learned to only bring him good news based on
business-as-usual thinking, and cover up problems that needed major innovation
until it was much too late to correct them. The company declined during his
reign. Near the end of his employment,
he sold Sabre - the most profitable portion of the company - to temporarily
drive up the value of his stock. Since then, AA has produced very little
profit. Subsequent CEOs have sadly followed in the bad CEO’s business-as-usual footsteps
and done even worse. when petroleum prices spiral upward in the coming years,
all such airlines must go bankrupt
(as many already have).
As a second-generation research
scientist, I am very familiar with this universal characteristic of
non-learning human nature. Albert Einstein said: "Great spirits have
always encountered strong opposition from mediocre minds." (CoroLarry: "If you frequently encounter
strong opposition, you may not be choosing your battles wisely.")
Once again quoting Einstein:
"The thinking that created today's problems is insufficient to solve
them." Later Einstein wrote: "It gives me great pleasure to see the
stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed."
(Confrontational innovators are often thought of as incorrigible
nonconformists.) “Being in a minority, even a minority of one, does not make
one insane.” - Winston Smith in George Orwell's "1984"
It is sad that our best creative
thinkers generally don't receive local recognition until AFTER they receive the
Nobel Prize, even then they are often still ignored. The problem is ancient. The Bible points out
that: "A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country."
We must learn to recognize, encourage, and nurture creative thinking and the
valuable behavior of confrontational innovators. Companies and government
agencies must become more agile, intelligent and creative, just to keep up with
the accelerating pace of technology change, and the many problems created by
our Non-Learning Nation.
The important lesson that modern
American managers still need to learn is that an effective transformational
leader must be: (1) Dissatisfied with some aspects of business as usual,
(2) Prepared to wisely confront and do intellectual, emotional, and political
battle with the multitudes of mediocre minds, and (3) Have a Compelling Vision
of the Future, which (4) Justifies the necessary investment in innovation, and
(5) Can be efficiently conveyed to everyone whose obsolete thinking and bad
decision-making processes must be reinvented.
Resistance to change is normal. If
you are not encountering resistance, you are probably practicing
counterproductive Groupthink. You need to search for the high-resistance WHACKO
ideas. Walt Disney said: “All the adversity I've had in my life, all my
troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me... You may not realize it when it
happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.” …
“I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn't know how to
get along without it.”
Giving up control of
business-as-usual to allow the best future solution to emerge is both scary and
necessary: Mario Andretti wisely observed: “If everything seems under control,
you’re just not going fast enough.”
This certainly does NOT mean that all
new ideas are better than old ideas. Critical thinking skills MUST be applied
to all innovations. The problem is that new ideas often require new evaluation
criteria. Obsolete criteria will cause the rejection of outstanding new ideas
in favor of declining business-as-usual decisions. BUT, if you are not
encountering resistance to change, you probably are not being innovative
enough. “Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be
first overcome.” - Samuel Johnson
An effective innovator can use Resistance
To Change, to accomplish meaningful goals.
The first step is to choose your battles wisely:
(1) What Is The Highest Priority
Thing To Change That Will Do The Greatest Good?
The Primary Source Of Resistance is a
lack of agreement about today’s problems.
Major innovations seldom take place without building consensus, cooperation,
collaboration, and co-ownership of the solution by many people.
Building Resolution Consensus often
involves a Situation Analysis, identification and agreement about Core Problems,
and the Causes that are bringing about the undesirable effect. Building
consensus among those who created the problem is challenging. “Every great
advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.”
- Thomas Huxley
Getting people to laugh about how
very stupid and ineffective today’s business practices are is a first step. The
Wall Street Journal said that Scott Adams’ “Dilbert Principle” was the best
MANAGEMENT book they had ever read. At one time, most cubicles had Dilbert
cartoons that matched the way their own company was being mismanaged.
(2) What Should We Change To?
Resistance involves: (a) Lack of
agreement on a possible direction for solution elements, (b) Lack of agreement
that the solution will solve the problem, and (c) Concern that the solution
will lead to new undesirable side effects (which will impact the vested
interests of different stakeholders).
The challenging problem for the would-be
innovator is building consensus around a powerful, compelling Vision Of The
Future that correct the agreed-to root problem causes without serious undesirable
side effects. For example, elimination of petroleum begs the question of what
to do with existing infrastructure and employees. Offshore oil platform skills
will be valuable for offshore wind power generators, etc.
(3) How To Make The Change Happen
Resistance comes from fear of the
unknown, lack of a clear path around perceived obstacles, lack of
follow-through after agreement is reached, failure to keep the Vision
compelling and fresh in the mind of those being impacted.
The innovation team must publish
well-thought development plan details, strategies and tactics that clarify what
needs to happen, who will do what, and how the change will be better for them.
Synchronization of the efforts of teams and tasks is essential. When bumps
appear in the road, or mid-course corrections are made, the ripple effects must
be deal with in a way that builds confidence, not resistance. Planning, monitoring,
team-building, and leadership are key elements of successful innovations.
In many cases it takes decades to
bring about meaningful improvements (like eliminating the use of past-peak
petroleum), as demonstrated in today’s healthcare, energy, housing,
transportation, politics, computing and communication technology.
Students Of Everything
Throughout this book you will find
many references to our (American) Non-Learning Nation.
My father was a creative research scientist. The most important lesson that he
planted in me was: “Lifelong learning in an ever expanding universe of
endless possibilities.”
He taught me to respect and strive
for the greatness of creative people like Albert Einstein, Nicoli Tesla,
Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, and Walt Disney. They were all
self-motivated, extremely valuable people who were continuously learning and
contributing
to society, even well into their productive advanced years.
A modern American education does NOT
teach students self-motivated lifelong learning. Innocent children sit in a “conformity
classroom” like baby birds, waiting for a dirty worm. They are conditioned to
believe that they should wait to be spoon-fed by the fountain of
knowledge flowing from the front of the forum. John Dewey said: “Every great advance in science has issued
from a new audacity of imagination.” Audacity is defined as daring boldness
to challenge assumptions and confront or engage in something difficult,
dangerous or challenging - in stark contrast to our sad conformity classrooms
that numb the minds of our children.
Today, many American children feel
that going to school is an undesirable thing to be avoided. Pink Floyd
proclaimed to the masses: “We don’t need no education –
We don’t need no thought control.” The quality of an American education has
been declining since the baby boomers graduated from high school. Today, only
62% of American males graduate from high school, which clearly demonstrates
that we are living in a Non-Learning Nation. The on-time graduation rate for
Those who lack a high school
education have a 73% unemployment rate in their twenties. They are likely to
spend a lifetime as a heavy burden on society. They are at high risk of
becoming criminals, teaching street crime to those around them, having
out-of-wedlock undesired, unloved children, and dying of social diseases like
HIV/AIDS. Consider the devastating crime rate in uneducated
A tiny number of uneducated
gangsters, thugs, drug abusers, and hoodlums have become wealthy role models
that are being imitated by masses of self-destructive children who drop out of
school, and often die violent deaths. Or, they immorally spread deadly diseases
– Never learning the essence of an abundant life. They do great damage to their
entire generation and to those who will follow, but our children are filled
with their bad music videos.
If an innocent child is born to
poorly-educated parents, does that give our wealthiest citizens the right to
deny the child a good education, healthcare, reasonably priced good-quality
food, or a minimal home with low energy bills? Walt Disney believed that
children are our most valuable resource. Do you? Are YOU happy with today’s
decline in American education?
at ever escalating high cost.
In stark contrast, for 27-years ZED
has demonstrated far superior sustainable energy solutions. We do NOT need
radical new technology breakthroughs. All we need is people with functional
brains who pro-actively seek knowledge, and pay attention to previous
successes. We do not have to wait for the fountain of knowledge to feed us yet
another dirty worm. Humans have the potential to observe and learn the truth
for as long as they are alive.
EDUCATION IS VERY IMPORTANT. IT MUST LAST A LIFETIME for us to grow and improve
out situation.
Benjamin Franklin wrote: “The
definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting
different results.”
Albert Einstein wrote something
similar: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when
we created them.”
In 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the
best-known phrase of any of our American foundational political documents in
the Declaration of Independence:
"We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,
Consider the intellectually
productive life of Abraham Lincoln. He brought about unprecedented improvement
in the morally corrupt traditional behavior of our hypocritical new nation. In
the 1850’s, Abraham Lincoln repeatedly pointed out the extreme hypocrisy found
in our Declaration of Independence, while our nation practiced immoral slavery.
"Fourscore and seven years ago
our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty
and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."
Later, the very gifted non-violent
pacifist Martin Luther King, Jr. famously stated:
"I have a dream that one day
this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold
these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.' "
Clearly, Lincoln and King
built on
More has been written in
English about the productive life of Abraham Lincoln than any other man except
Jesus Christ. How did
The answer is simple – Abraham Lincoln had ALMOST NO FORMAL EDUCATION.
From his early years,
With no formal education
available to him,
Would YOU like to have an
MIT education? Many MIT grads with only a four-year bachelor’s degree can make
a starting salary of $80,000 to $120,000 per year. They often dominate the
field that they chose to work in. Perhaps you say – “I just can’t afford
and MIT education.”
Did you know that anyone in the world can have an MIT education for FREE?
You can start it at any age. You cannot be rejected by MIT. You can complete it
in less than three years, or take as long as you like. You can learn at your
own pace. You can take as many or as few courses as you like, in whatever
intrigues and motivates you. There are no uninteresting courses that you have
to take if you don’t want to. You cannot flunk out (unless you quit on your
own). There is no grading curve. You are only competing with yourself for your
own self-improvement. You can get a MUCH better free education today, than what
world-changing Abraham Lincoln had available to him.
“How could I possibly do that?” - You
might well. All that you need is powerful self-motivation, a strong desire to
improve yourself, an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, an awareness that your
value to yourself and the rest of society greatly increases as you accumulate
knowledge, recognition of the priority that a good education is to you,
recognition that your problem solving ability is not demonstrated by a framed
certificate hanging on the wall, a desire for lifelong learning, and an
Internet connection.
You get started simply by going to
www.MIT.edu, and then click on OpenCourseWare.
Most MIT courses are now available online, and the rest should be available
soon.
The balance is entirely up to no one but YOU. Do you understand the high
priority of Lifelong Learning, or do you plan to become yet
another Non-Learning Entity? MIT is not the only great university with such
generous online material, but it is one of my favorites. Other universities are
adding their courses to the worldwide web every day. ZED offers great thanks to
them all! I will always be active in such ongoing self-education programs.
We add this cautionary quote from
Albert Einstein: “
modify long-held bad habits, or solve even simple problems with nearly-obvious
solutions.
Great thinkers have always
intuitively understood that creative problem solving ability is a
“USE IT OR LOSE IT” proposition – It gets stronger when you use it, and weaker
when you don’t. Today’s politics and “business-as-usual” madness clearly proves
that this is true.
”Insanity in individuals is rare, but in groups, parties, nations and epochs,
it is the rule.”
- Bertrand Russell
Peer pressure (doing things the way they have always been done, like driving gasoline cars and paying unnecessary escalating energy bills), makes it extremely difficult for a problem-solving innovator to maintain the intellectual integrity of non-conforming superior solutions. One of the most famous of Albert Einstein’s quotes was: “Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.” Later, after receiving the Lord & Taylor Award in 1953, he said: ”It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible non-conformist warmly acclaimed.” Disagreeing with our uninsightful peers is never easy, but just because you are receiving violent opposition, does not necessarily mean that you are a “great spirit.” (smile) We must choose our battles wisely.
Study what others have to say. Pay close attention to the countless lessons of the past about successes AND failures. Listen to the voice of experience. Avoid the many documented mistakes of others. Learn “why” and “how” to continuously learn. Expand your problem-solving creative capacity, and then, consolidate and apply your new knowledge and imagination to do many creative things, solve some significant problems, change long-held bad habits, write a book, give of yourself and become a blessing to society.
Become a STUDENT OF EVERYTHING
“Lifelong learning in an ever
expanding universe of endless possibilities.” - Dale Hartweg
“Education is not preparation for life; education IS life itself.” - John Dewey
The significant energy, economic and
ecological problems that our world faces today
are NOT a lack of technology, but rather a lack of education about what already
has been proven to work effectively. Science, nature and economic education is
essential to life.
0.6 Land Developer and Community Planner Summary
Conventional land developments rely on basic public utilizes like centralized supply of electricity and natural gas. If you want to develop land that is far from these traditional energy sources, public utility connections can add significantly to the initial price of each lot you develop. You will add unpleasant peak demand to existing utility companies, which will have to build new expensive, polluting facilities at the highest construction prices in history. It would actually be better for them if you do NOT add burden to existing utility companies.
With Zero Energy DesignTM (ZED), we now
have new options that were not cost effective decades ago, when the customary
business practices for land developers and city planners were being solidified
into the common bad habits of today.
Individual homes can now each have
their own rooftop photovoltaic system for private electric power generation,
but, is this the lowest total cost of ownership for them, if we have the luxury
of planning an entire new housing addition, or small city, in the near future?
What type of year round community
services and amenities would be a good idea to plan for and develop, to
encourage sales in the addition, and minimize impact on the environment, with
the lowest initial cost and long-term monthly operation and maintenance fees?
How about a year-round community
indoor swimming pool, passive-solar-heated-and-cooled sports courts, community
meeting / club rooms, community big screen video / motion picture theater,
indoor / outdoor community barbeque area, housing addition free renewable power
generation (photovoltaic, wind, hydrogen, waterwheel, etc. so everyone doesn’t
have to have their own rooftop power system), solar-powered community-wide
domestic water purification, sewage treatment and gray water supply for solar
powered irrigation, environmentally friendly recyclable waste management system
and energy recovery, community-wide solar hot water generation (domestic use
and swimming pools), cost-effective community-wide cold-water solar-powered
absorption chillers, two-way community-wide satellite data / entertainment
downlinks, neighborhood fiber optic connections to every house (integrated
digital fiber telephone, video conference, entertainment, and Internet – much
more than just community-negotiated flat rate cable and broadband communication
service), solar powered streetlights, parking lots and recreation area
lighting, inner community neighborhood electric transportation system,
community-wide building material and ZED house plan volume purchase agreements,
mobile construction facility for mass production of housing-addition-wide
modular components, like a kitchen / bathroom / laundry room / equipment room -
reusable architectural design pattern / generic housing components, low
maintenance indigenous plant landscaping standards and planned nature
conservation beltways, etc..
We will discuss what can be done to
maximize the functionality, lower initial and monthly costs, and in generally minimize
the total cost of ownership of Abundant Energy Living in harmony with nature.
In the sixth century, sunrooms on
houses and public buildings are so common that the Justinian Code established
"sun rights" to ensure that every building has access to the sun, and
future structures would not shade existing buildings.
In the first through the fourth
centuries, the ancient city of
2500 years ago, entire ancient Greek and Roman cities were designed so EVERY home was open to the south to take advantage of the low winter sun, and to block high summer sun. You can still see the spectacular layout of Priene of the southeast side of a mountain with a beautiful commercial lake view today.
This level of large-scale comprehensive solar community planning has yet to be equaled in modern times to the degree that it was done two millennia ago. We would enjoy working closely with YOU to accomplish the very best community of tomorrow that is possible to do with everything that our combined knowledge could apply toward solving community-wide solar planning strategies. This is an important part of our Community Planning Vision.
One problem with yesterday’s
communities is that that are focused around cars and many miles of avoidable
travel, instead of human needs, activities and lifestyles.
Walking
Distance Community Activity Centers
“Live, Shop, Work and Play Locally” Campaigns –
Telecommuting Start Up Assistance
Community Self-Employed
Community Day Care /
Shared Exterior Green Spaces and Low-Energy
Recreational Facilities
Year-Round Indoor Swimming, Sports Courts, Community
Gathering Rooms, etc.
Community Compost Heap – Separate Organics,
Recyclables, and Trash Minimization
Non-Petroleum Public Transportation – No CO2 Released
Preferred Parking and Free Power Outlets For Electric
Vehicle Recharging
Zero
Support of all available energy-related rebates and
incentive programs
Recommended Energy Star® Appliances, Windows,
Lighting, and even Certified Homes
Core-Module Manufactured Building Technology
Components and Assembly Facilities
Wood-Free Structural Insulated Panels, plus
Lightweight Metal Framing
Vegetated Green Roof Design Standards, and Maintenance
Assistance
Movable Facade Seasonal Screen Controls (Shade Screen
recommendations and sources)
Rain Water Collection Systems / Grey Water Recycling
Systems
Xeriscaping - Native Vegetation Landscaping – Low or
no irrigation required
Low Water Consumption Toilets, Showerheads and Faucets
Low-Cost Solar Hot Water Systems – Domestic Hot Water
Plus Auxiliary Space Heating
Passive Solar Space Heating Design Assistance and
Demonstration Projects
Photovoltaic Solar Electric Systems (Wind, Micro
Hydro, Wave Energy where appropriate)
Nighttime Backup Power Facilities for when the sun is
not shining
Low-Cost Community Entertainment, cable, satellite,
security, Internet, fiber optics, etc.
Automated Crime Watch Assistance – Anti-Social
Behavior Identification / Prevention
Community Geothermal Well Planning and Recommendations
Economy-Of-Scale Community Chilled Water Refrigeration
Systems
Daytime Solar Absorption Chillers - Nighttime Ice
Batteries
Environmentally Friendly Interior and Exterior
Finishes
Environmental and Energy Sensitive Lifestyle
Encouragement
0.7
Zero Energy, Off The Grid, Rural Residences and Agricultural Farming
Operations
Inept
pork-barrel politicians are looking to American farmers to help our nation
become energy independent, by growing biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel. Ethanol
from sugar cane works in
In January
of 2007, bad
American farming is VERY ENERGY
INTENSIVE. Farmers currently use large quantities of petroleum and electricity for
field preparation, cultivation, planting, irrigation, harvesting, storage,
refrigeration, food processing, distribution, and family living. Escalating
energy costs are devastating many farmers. Small family farms (especially those
less than 1500 acres) that have existed for over a century are rapidly going
bankrupt because of energy cost.
Many farm
owners are working for less than minimum wage, or losing money in their best
years. This is obviously an unsustainable trend. Even the bad pork-barrel
biofuel subsidies for ethanol from corn are NOT sufficient to make these family
farms viable. Pork-barrel “rural development grants” are driving up the price
of farm land, so small farms cannot afford to expand to become competitive.
Legislation which was intended to help small farmers
is actually driving them faster toward bankruptcy.
Struggling
farms are a primary consumer of illegal immigrant labor, which is a national
security issue since it ENCOURAGES the
Farmers have done everything they can to cut costs legally, but it is far too
little, far too late.
Ethanol
from corn is a VERY BAD POLITICAL STRATEGY for legislators to subsidize. Today’s
best (conservative) estimates are that the petroleum and electricity that it
takes to produce one gallon of ethanol is about 75% to 80% of the energy in a
gallon of ethanol!
The incremental net energy output is very small indeed. It is estimated that IF
we diverted 100% of farm corn production away from food, and used 100% of all
available American corn to produce ethanol for American consumption, it would
only decrease our petroleum imports by a mere 2.4%! Consider the high cost to
the over a billion people worldwide who would likely starve as a direct result
of such outrageous stupidity. It would probably kill far more people than the
sum total of all American residents today, just so we could continue to drive
our gluttonous gas guzzling SUV’s. It has been estimated that more than 2.4% of
petroleum imports could be reduced by merely giving our cars a tune up and
properly inflating our tires.
Ethanol
contains water. It cannot be transported inexpensively through existing
pipelines as petroleum can, since the ethanol would corrode the pipelines and
make them burst.
Ethanol must be transported by more expensive corrosion-resistant tank trucks.
Ethanol also corrodes aluminum carburetors, disrupting engine fuel supply and
making car maintenance more expensive. The infrastructure to deliver ethanol in
large volume does not exist today.
At today’s
corn-from-ethanol production price, it would now require well over a $4 per
gallon sales price, just for non-profit “break even.” Ethanol contains about
20% less energy than gasoline. This means you would have to buy nearly $5
worth of (unsubsidized) ethanol, just to drive the same distance as one gallon
of gasoline. The price of producing ethanol from corn in the near future is not
likely to decline much – in fact there are multiple pressures that are probably
going to make its price increase. Even if we ignore all of the other reasons
for not using ethanol (like the fact that most cars won’t run on it today),
ethanol from corn is NOT going to be a reasonable fuel for
The
proposed solution to ethanol from corn is “cellulosic enzymatic ethanol.” The
feedstock would be something like perennial sawgrass that does NOT have to be
replanted every year. It does not require pesticides, fertilizers or
irrigation. It is harvested like hay. Enzymes (yet to be developed cost
effectively) would break down the cellulose into glucose, which would then be
used to make ethanol at a much-less-energy-intensive, lower cost. It sounds
good, but U.S. DOE / FDA estimates suggest that it will be mid-21st
Century before large volumes will be available at a reasonable cost, by which
time many other cleaner energy alternatives that emit zero CO2 will
be more mature (solar, wind, hydrogen, etc.). Ethanol is NOT a panacea!
When food-friendly organic family
farms go bankrupt and they are taken over by big agribusiness
factory farm corporations, they are forced to maximize profits and crop
production yields by any controversial means necessary, such as common use of:
toxic pesticides, questionable laboratory chemical fertilizers (which damage the
food, consumers and water runoff), inefficient mass irrigation (depleting
scarce freshwater supply), proximity of dense livestock feedlots to vegetable
production, (resulting in e-coli, salmonella, contamination, etc.), growth
hormones that cause human juvenile diabetes, breast cancer in women, and
prostate cancer in men, indiscriminate antibiotics, which enable explosive
growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and pus in milk. Europeans wisely ban
the importation of American beef with hormones, due to the many serious health
problems that it causes.
Our nation very much needs ethical
organic family farmers who can make a GOOD income without resorting to bad
factory farming practices. Consumers have proven time and again that many
of us are more than willing to pay more for higher-quality healthier organic
foods. Even cost-conscious Wal-Mart is now selling an increasing number of
organic food products to more-informed consumers, who are worried about the sad
news of the declining quality of American and imported factory food (as I am).
The
ESSENTIAL KEY to making organic family farming profitable is the cost of
ENERGY.
If the net price of farming energy consumption could be reduced to ZERO, the
profitability of any farm would be greatly improved, since energy is a MAJOR
avoidable operating expense. American politicians are looking to farmers to
help us become more energy independent, BUT we must FIRST help our ethical
organic FARMERS to become energy independent.
The
solution REQUIRES Zero Energy DesignTM Holistic Systems Engineering that
encompasses the entire seed-to-seed farming lifecycle, and environmental
sustainability.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.R.80.IH:
0.8 ZED Summary for Politicians and
Legislators
Solar energy is an important
refreshing element of the
The new alternative energy
legislation being introduced in the 2007 U.S. Congress offers interesting
potential. We hope it is not too little too late.
The 2007 budget included only $148
million dollars in solar energy research funding. George Bush’s 2008 budget
proposal repeated the small number, which is actually a funding cut when we
consider the negative impact of inflation. Despite this unenlightened token
funding level, solar energy equipment sales increased 40% and 45% each of the
last two years. Consider the following basic mathematics.
Inefficient American buildings waste
more energy, and add more atmospheric pollution than either our inefficient
American transportation or dirty industrial processes. Solar energy has the
potential to solve these problems, AND eliminate the need for any oil-related
wars. George Bush asked for $120 BILLION PER YEAR for the next two years for
the oil-related ghastly war in
$148 million dollars is only slightly
more that $1 per household. ALL American buildings need to take advantage of
FREE CLEAN RENEWABLE SOLAR ENERGY. At today’s solar equipment prices that would
require over $20,000 per average sized home to retrofit them with solar energy
equipment. The average American home wastes roughly $2,000 on avoidable energy
bills. IF you do not consider solar energy subsidies, the time value of money,
or Energy Efficient Mortgages, it would take about ten years to pay for solar
equipment with a 25-year warrantee. Nationwide, that would be about $250
billion – a little more than twice what we are spending on the oil-related war
in
Photovoltaic solar electricity has
been dropping in price by about one half every five years (for reasons similar
to why silicon-wafer-based computers are getting less expensive and faster). IF
WE NEED MORE INTELLIGENT LEGISLATORS
WHO UNDERSTAND THE SIGNIFICANT NEED TO INVEST IN A
A homeowner who is subsidized by the
government to invest in long-term solar energy equipment MUST be assured that a
large building to the south will NOT someday block their free access to
low-angle winter sunlight. Ancient Greek
and Roman solar cities had such legislation 2500 years ago. We now need it in
the infant progressive American Zero Energy Home communities of today.
Zero Energy Home subsidized education
programs are very
much needed to take advantage of today’s proven Zero Energy DesignTM technology.
The outrageous things that modern poorly-trained architects are now doing in
the name of energy efficiency (described in part above) should become illegal
CRIMINAL behaviors.
Minimum building codes that are CONSISTENTLY
ENFORCED by helpful inspector / mentors are immediately required, since
existing energy inefficient building codes fall so very short of the potential
of ZED homes. From recent history, we KNOW that the inspectors themselves need
to be inspected, to remain uncorrupted by devious lazy homebuilders.
Subsidized housing for man-made,
weather-or-terrorist-caused disaster victims needs to demonstrate the very best
cost-effective far-sighted ZED principles that our best-and-brightest ZED
Imagineers can come up with, working with limited budgets, and the pressure for
very-rapid housing development creation. We need time and budgets to develop
these plans, and get prepared BEFORE the next disaster strikes.
ALL future government expenditures on all
types of housing and office buildings constructed from now on, should be
REQUIRED to take fully advantage of ZED, and become an outstanding role model
of what future Zero Energy Construction should be like, for all of
Politicians should demonstrate their
deep energy concern and live in Zero Energy Homes, drive Zero Pollution
Electric Cars, and work in Zero Energy Office Buildings. The desired new energy
infrastructure should be subsidized. The old energy infrastructures that
created Global Warming and escalating price dependency on deadly imported
foreign energy, should NEVER be subsidized ever again (as they still are in the
2005 Energy Policy Act).
MORE money needs to be spent to
create the desirable future, than to prop up the declining dirt road to the
rapidly-approaching dead end of petroleum, which the American government has
wrongfully subsidized for a century. It is now past the point where REVERSE
DISCRIMINATION AGAINST PETROLEUM should begin – just like the way we have a
high “sin tax” on deadly alcohol and tobacco. We need the same type of thing to
discourage further dependency on Global Warming man-made climate changing
energy implementation.
Today’s American Energy Crisis
clearly impacts people the most, who are the least able to afford high energy
prices. It is only fair that law-abiding, deserving, low-income people
(especially those with disabilities who need economical assisted living) be
significantly subsidized in the application of home ZED concept retrofit
implementation to quickly eliminate their monthly utility bills. Tax credit
subsidies do NOT work for people in poverty who pay no taxes. Most lack the
capacity to investigate and understand the need for ZED. Low-income energy
audits should provide specific recommendations, and the direct ZED retrofit
implementation assistance is clearly required.
Politicians and legislators who still
refuse to enthusiastically support clean, renewable, sustainable energy
applications (like distributed direct solar energy) should make immediate plans
to retire and support the new enthusiastic ZED generation, which grew 45% last
year.
This ZED Group stands ready to inform
your constituents of the need for you to make room for inevitable rapid changes
that today’s Energy Crisis and Global Warming demand.
Brazil’s
basic oil tax wisdom REDUCED their long-term demand for petroleum, whereas
Reagan’s and Bush’s shortsighted subsidizing of lower gasoline prices
ENCOURAGED rapidly-expanding excessive petroleum consumption, and the
purchasing of gluttonous gas guzzling American SUV’s, which have the worst fuel
economy on the planet.
(See Chapter Four)
He has been a popular member of the German Parliament, since 1980; President of
EUROSOLAR - The European Association for Renewable Energy since 1988; General
Chairman of the World Council for Renewable Energy (WCRE); prolific author,
policy innovator, and global leader in the field of renewable energy. Scheer is
the recipient of the Alternative Nobel Prize in
The
26 Three Gorges turbines are designed to produce 18,200 Megawatts of
clean, fuel-free electricity, which could be up to one-ninth of
Recognizing
their own serious energy and pollution problems, in November 2006 (with
encouragement from Dr. Scheer’s work),
The World’s Largest 100-Megawatt Solar Energy Power Generation Facility
(eight times larger than the current largest 12 mw facility in Arnstein
August
2006,
Suntech
also signed an $5-to$6 Billion agreement with MEMC Electronic Materials, Inc.,
a leading
Wal-Mart
moved its International Headquarters to
Dr.
Hermann Scheer’s outstanding work has for decades been dedicated to shifting
from non-renewable fossil fuels, and dangerous nuclear energy, to
cost-effective, clean, renewable energy. He has demonstrated both necessity and
feasibility of this transition in his five books, and more than one thousand
articles, which have had a major influence on worldwide renewable energy
deployment.
Through EUROSOLAR and WCRE, Dr. Scheer
elaborated the specific details of his original policy concepts for renewable
energy dissemination, and he initiated necessary legal frameworks in
Ø 100,000 photovoltaic solar roofs - the world’s first
mass implementation program;
Ø The German Renewable Energy Act with 16,000 megawatts
of decentralized
renewable energy generation capacity
below 5 megawatts per installation; and
Ø Tax exemption for all biofuels, making renewable fuels
cost less than fossil fuels.
Dr.
Scheer’s revolutionary German National Renewable Energy Act provides the major
boost for the renewable energy technology industries sector, triggering a high
annual renewable energy growth rate.
Worldwide, there are very few
nations with an outstanding practical commitment to renewable energy. In
Because
of Scheer’s work,
At
a recent speech in the
(2) Fast breeder reactors must be invented. But, no one has been able to
construct a single functioning reactor of this type so far. IF breeder
reactors are achieved one day in the future, the energy they generate would be much
more expensive and problematic than clean, safe, fuel-free, renewable solar
energy.
We
cannot expect the myopic G8 to promote a reasonable renewable energy plan for
the world. It must take place at the grass roots with small, agile,
well-managed, far-sighted corporations that are not hopelessly bound to
unsustainable petroleum, or nuclear energy.
Scheer’s work is a shining
example to which all American politicians should aspire. How many American
legislators have been bringing about popular energy innovations since 1980? How
many have received a Nobel Prize, or been named the Hero of the Century? Young
people, if you want to become a successful career politician, bringing about
valuable social change, you would do well to study the unprecedented success of
Please See “New ZED Legislation”
proposals at the end of Chapter Four, and Chapter Nine.
Zero Energy DesignTM will be glad to help you accomplish your goals.
Please read on.
0.9 21st Century Worldwide
Energy Future Alternatives (See our 200 slide presentation)
In
the 19th and 20th centuries,
With
the exception of a few electric trains and sailboats, almost all of the world’s
transportation energy comes from burning petroleum. New wealth from rapid
globalization is making cars available to hundreds of millions of new
individuals that could never afford one before. This is happening at a time
when we have exceeded worldwide peak oil production capacity and future
potential gasoline supplies are beginning to decline. Obviously this trend can
NOT be sustained for more than very few short years. The damage to Earth’s
climate / environment, and the spiraling price of gasoline and diesel fuel MUST
soon bring petroleum-based transportation to a rapid decline. We cannot
continue our gluttonous transportation lifestyle without radically improved 21st
century transportation energy alternatives.
Biofuels
are NOT an effective sustainable alternative. The explosion of Earth’s population from 1.9 billion to 6.7 billion
in only 100 years has resulted in massive starvation and insufficient
freshwater for drinking, bathing, or raising crops. As Earth’s population
redoubles multiple times in the 21st century, we cannot easily
reverse this unsustainable trend. Billions of children and adults WILL starve,
and water will become the source of international wars. Serious threats of wars
about disrupting water supplies have already been expressed.
Following
Buildings
are the major waster of energy in
Electricity
is a primary form of delivering the energy we consume today. Today’s power grid
with large centralized power plants is EXTREMELY INEFFICIENT. It takes three
units of input energy to deliver only one unit of electrical energy to our
homes, offices, and factories. The farther the consumer is from the power
plant, the less efficient electricity becomes. As the total cost of input fuel
increases, this trend of inefficiency is NOT sustainable. We MUST have a more
distributed form of sustainable power generation, such as wind and solar
energy, which are clean and require NO expensive fuel.
85%
of today’s electricity is generated by burning dirty, nonrenewable,
carbon-based “fossil fuels.” It has taken millions of years for plants and
animals to capture solar energy, and the geologic sedimentation / compression
process to convert it into coal, petroleum, and natural gas. Such fossil fuels
can NOT be renewed in a millennium.
Fossil
fuels are clearly a short-term, DEAD END ROAD TO DISASTER that cannot be
sustained much longer. The entire world MUST nearly eliminate fossil fuel
consumption in the 21st century. (First of all, it won’t be
available, AND even if it were, it would cost too much, have unstable /
unfriendly sources, lead to international energy wars, and eventually make our
environment unlivable.)
The
world also needs to eliminate today’s burning of wood by nearly-one-third of
our impoverished population for year-round cooking and winter heating. It is
badly damaging our delicate atmosphere, and killing trees that help purge CO2
and produce fresh O2. Simple alternatives to burning wood are
readily available (like inexpensive solar cooking ovens), but there is a
general lack of education and solution production.
85%
of yesterday’s existing carbon-based energy infrastructure MUST be replaced in
the coming decades, at GREAT expense. Will we aggressively begin today, or
continue to irresponsibly leave the energy conversion burden to our offspring?
How shortsighted and selfish our gluttonous society has become, in so very many
ways.
In
the 19th century,
Wood-burning stoves could be used to burn coal. Stoves could even be
retrofitted with natural gas burners, BUT, the infrastructure that supplied
natural gas lights was of no value at all in delivering electricity to homes,
electric lights, and appliances. There are often society-wide costs associated
with energy transitions.
With
the exception of a small number of hydroelectric plants, most of 19th
and 20th century energy involved burning nonrenewable
highly-polluting carbon fuels, which is still true today, but cannot be
sustained in the future.
One
point of this section is that for a century and a half, every few decades our
society HAS made a transition from one energy source to another. It should be
no surprise to anyone that it must happen again very soon.
Consider
the implications of the facts that: (1) We have no choice but to phase out
carbon-based fossil fuel energy dependency in the 21st century, and
(2) This must be done at a time when worldwide demands for energy are
escalating at an ever increasing pace. WE MUST rise to the challenge of new
cost-effective energy technology. Resistance to change MUST be rapidly replaced
with aggressive R&D, much like the way we sent Men to the Moon in only ten
years. Our current investment in our 21st century energy future is
at least 100 times less than what is required to meet our predictable future
energy demands. Worldwide, we need to bring online the equivalent of a clean,
renewal-energy power plant every day for decades,
(to replace existing fossil fuel plants, plus provide for our growing future
energy demands),
which obviously is NOT happening today. Without sufficient energy, poverty will
increase.
So
if we eliminate burning carbon-based fossil fuels and water-thirsty biofuels
from our growth-oriented plans for 21st Century Abundant Energy In
Harmony With Nature, what remains? 80% reduction in energy consumption through
non-disruptive energy conservation is a great start, which this Zero energy
DesignTM book is dedicated to providing. But we still need cost-effective,
low-cost energy sources to power our cars, computers, appliances, businesses
and gadgets.
Roughly
99% of today’s electricity is generated by mechanically rotating a 19th
century turbine that causes coils to pass through magnetic fields to create
electromotive force.
The mechanical rotational energy commonly comes from burning fossil fuels
(85%), water moving through a dam, steam produced from dirty nuclear energy, or
wind.
Hydroelectric
and wind are the clean, sustainable ways of rotating mechanical energy, BUT the
opportunities for large American dams have already been exploited, leaving only
wind generation and micro hydroelectric rotating mechanical possibilities. Wind
generators are now growing at 35% per year.
If
every possible location for a cost-effective wind generator has one in place,
they could generate more than ten times the energy from fossil fuels at the
beginning of the 21st century, BUT the world would sure be a strange
looking place if wind generators were everywhere. The shadows from their many
millions of blades would make the sun look like it was blinking. (smile) One
problem with wind generators is that they do not work 24/7/365. In Chapter
Eight, we discuss new wind systems that provide on-demand electricity. Their
blades are cleverly attached to an innovative compressor, instead of a
generator.
And
that brings us back to the basic source of all renewable energy on the Earth:
The SUN.
Daily solar radiation potential is thousands of times larger that the rate that
we are now consuming dirty, nonrenewable fossil fuels. The problem is the
general lack of an infrastructure to convert sunshine into a useful form.
Since
the beginning of recorded history, humans have always understood that the Sun
makes things warm, and is required for plants to grow. It is only in the last
century and a half that public utility / energy companies have caused society
to not pay attention to the path of the Sun, and to design their homes in a way
that ignores the potential of solar energy altogether. As more people are
becoming dissatisfied with their energy bills, solar energy is experiencing
renewed great interest, and significant government subsidies.
Solar
thermal energy (heating things such as water and air directly with sunshine) is
simple, extremely-cost-effective technology. Everyone should take advantage of
it today. We do not need to wait on any future technology breakthroughs. This
ZED book explains many clever applications and design patterns.
Producing
electricity from sunshine with “photovoltaic” (PV) technology is now expanding
at 45% per year – the fastest growing energy technology on our planet today. It
offers great hope for a major portion of our near-term energy solution. In many
locations, today’s PV systems generate electricity at the same price, or even
less than public utility companies, PLUS they consume no energy other than sunshine
for a lifetime (warranted for 25 years).
PV electricity is a technology whose time
has finally come, with potential for significant improvements in coming
decades. They government is even subsidizing PV systems with $10,000’s – it is
certainly the correct thing to do for many different reasons. PV’s eliminate
the need for high-maintenance rotating mechanical generators. They are merely
flat panels with no moving parts to wear our or repair. The price-per-watt of
PV’s has been falling by one half even five years (for some of the same reasons
that computer are getting cheaper. There is a new PV technology that has been
demonstrated that doubles their efficiency. It may be available in the
marketplace in only a few years. We discuss the possibilities.
Hydrogen is a near-perfect form of energy storage
that will PROBABLY play an important role in
I’ve been studying hydrogen technology since I was a freshman energy research
student.
The boundless energy of our 9,990o F sun comes from Fusion of Hydrogen
– The most common atom in the universe.
Hydrogen can be compressed, stored, and burned
like propane, or in a denser liquefied form (like liquefied natural gas - LNG)
as in the large Space Shuttle Orbiter fiberglass exterior fuel tank. Unlike the
Global Warming effect of propane or LNG, hydrogen burns PERFECTLY CLEAN,
producing nothing but pure H2O water vapor. It is a perfect
precision cooking fuel, since it produces NO toxins or greenhouse gases, and
hydrogen cooking needs no exterior venting. (In contrast, natural gas cooking
causes undesirable air pollution, heat transfer, and its make up air vents draw
in unconditioned exterior air infiltration.)
Hydrogen can be stored indefinitely and used
for on-demand energy when wind and solar energy are not available. Hydrogen
would be useful for things like 24-hour hot water heating (bathing, dishwashing,
clothes washing), AND electric power generation using today’s emerging H2
catalytic “fuel cells” in the home, OR in electric transportation systems and
mobile power equipment of many types.
The very serious problem with using
very much hydrogen today is that MOST of it is now being produced from natural
gas, which does contribute significantly to Global Warming.
Photovoltaic solar panels can be used to
produce electricity from the sun. The electricity can be used to perform
electrolysis on water to isolate hydrogen from oxygen, BUT the process is
expensive and inefficient – the hydrogen is worth less than the electricity
used to produce it, so a superior solar alternative hydrogen generation
technology is required.
One possible key to America’s use of
hydrogen in the 2020’s, is the technology being developed by the Florida Solar
Energy Center, under a $5-million-per-year hydrogen research grant from NASA
(Chapter Twelve). FSEC has an exciting leading-edge “photocatalytic process”
that uses sunlight (not electricity) to release hydrogen from ordinary tap
water. It works today, but it is still very inefficient and expensive. We HOPE
(although not yet proven) that it can become very cost effective in the 2020’s,
OR that some other clean cost-effective solar or wind hydrogen production
technique will emerge before then.
Until a low-cost non-polluting way to
release abundant hydrogen from water is developed, everything else is merely
optimistic scientific speculation, albeit worthy of significant investigation
investment.
IF we can learn how to cleanly, efficiently,
AND inexpensively produce hydrogen DIRECTLY from water and sunlight, it will
solve many problems of today’s other alternative energy fuels. Hydrogen can be
compressed (another FSEC research project), transported (like natural gas,
propane and LNG), and used in cars or mobile equipment. It can potentially be
generated, stored, and used in homes, offices, and industry any time needed,
when other alternative energy sources are not available.
Hydrogen has the potential to
become a wonderful new energy solution, IF we can just perfect a clean,
low-cost way to release it from water. In the near future, large industrial
hydrogen generation equipment would be very valuable, even if it was expensive.
But, IF a low-cost residential hydrogen system eventually emerges in the 21st
century, it could revolutionize the way we think about personal energy
solutions, and benefit even the poorest of energy-starved emerging nations and
people, in nearly unlimited humanitarian ways.
A byproduct of releasing hydrogen from water
is pure oxygen. Imagine having a regulated refreshment system that could give
you a SMALL amount of revitalizing O2 after vigorous work or
exercise. (Systematic control of O2 percentage would be mandated to
avoid over oxidation.) If someone in your home has acute or chronic respiratory
problems, almost free residential O2 could lower their medical
costs, and eliminate trips to refill O2 tanks.
IF sunlight and salt water (or toxic water)
could be used to produce pure hydrogen and oxygen at almost no cost,
they might be used in fuel cells to produce on-demand electricity, and the
purest form of laboratory-quality water - with none of the original feedstock
impurities. IF made cost-effective and SCALABLE by tomorrow’s technology
innovations, the worldwide humanitarian uses of this optimistic invention could
solve endless population-explosion freshwater and energy problems.
Hydrogen plus oxygen are near-perfect
high-temperature, high-precision, safe, clean welding gases that work
well for tiny jewelry, artistic metals, thermoplastics, cars, and even large
scale construction welding. Low cost residential H2 / O2
generation from sunlight and water could spawn a new “hobby” of
affordable precision home welding artists, and other things that haven’t been
dreamed of yet.
H2 / O2 welding could
lower the construction cost of tomorrow’s low-income affordable, durable,
steel-reinforced near-Zero-Energy Homes, and enable low-cost innovative bonding
of hybrid materials. A simple computer-controlled motion system could turn a
pinpoint variable-intensity H2 / O2 flame into a system
that can cut or engrave many materials with any image you can capture on a
computer. It might cost much less and do more than today’s popular laser
cutting and engraving systems (which ZED uses creatively today).
ZED Holistic Systems Engineering can create
endless energy innovation possibilities,
in unlimited areas unexplored by others. Holistic Creativity is often based on
the integration of concepts from diverse engineering and knowledge domains that
haven’t been used together by anyone else ever before.
Hydrogen is the simplest of all atoms – just
one proton and one electron. It is THE most abundant element in the
universe. What a wonderful future energy
potential hydrogen has, so WHY is
In
1905, Albert Einstein published his Theory of Relativity (e=mc2). Four decades later,
we used it to end the war with
21st
century Quantum Physics has now gone far beyond 1905 Relativity with modern
“Unified Field Theory” based on the emerging theories of “Planck’s Scale
Superstrings.”
With
the new European Supercollider near the Geneva Airport, physicists hope to
unlock new subatomic energy secrets that may eventually go unbelievably
farther than e=mc2.
Chapter Three explores many possibilities (which may include antigravity and unimaginable
“Big Bang” energy). Quantum Entanglement Physics, Superstring Unifying
Consciousness
is a motivational, fun mental exercise for our ZED creative imagination.
There
is very little theoretical limitation to the potential of our 21st
century energy possibilities.
We WILL
become masters of “Abundant Energy In Harmony With Nature.”
Zero Energy DesignTM Book - PREFACE
SUMMARY
Thank
you for your interest in Zero Energy DesignTM.
Our
Zero Energy DesignTM book has been evolving for over 27 years.
We
hope it will never be finished.
There
is an unlimited set of creative energy ideas available that will never be
exhausted. Every time we design a new customized-lifestyle solution, we
discover new buyer requirements and ways to make our clients happy. Our first ZED
home was nearly perfect. Our current ones are even better, with newer
technology, materials, economies of scale, and subsidies from multiple
motivated sources.
This
material is constantly being reorganized and made as complete and concise as we
can in the time available, but there will always be room for improvement in any
such endeavor.
We
know that there will be a few minor editing errors, and places where we might
be able to communicate more clearly, or organize our evolving material better. We
will certainly appreciate your frank feedback, and constructive criticism
of our effort to communicate our accumulated (somewhat overwhelming) ZED
knowledge.
Many of this book’s owners have registered their email address with us. Our privacy policy is that we never share this information with anyone, and we won’t send you spam. For those book owners who have registered their email address with us, we offer free updates, if-and-when you request them. We do not send out bulk mailing of our new material.
We know you will find this
material insightful and enlightening. It does take time to absorb.
We have tried to answer all of the questions people have asked us many times
before.
We look forward to hearing from YOU. We honestly feel that ZED offers the
Number One solution to the Number One Problem facing the world today.
Larry Hartweg ZEDmaster@ZeroEnergyDesign.com
About The Author
Larry Hartweg is a Second Generation Energy
Research Scientist. His father held a nuclear materials handling license, and
patents for remote nuclear monitor-and-control systems. He brought a lot of
energy-related equipment home for his son to play with. Larry’s childhood
“toys” (including radioactive power sources) were like very few children ever
had. He played with a candle-powered hot air balloon, windmills, generators,
motors, direct solar thermal conversion, photocells, and two-way radios. Father
and son built a race car, speed boat, and an electronic humanoid Major Domo
Robot.
Thomas Edison said: “To invent, you need a good imagination, and
a pile of junk.” Larry’s father taught him to respect Edison, Einstein,
Tesla, Walt Disney, et.al., AND how to invent. Larry constructed, understood,
and presented a nuclear cloud chamber for his Jr. High Science Fair project. It
demonstrated Einstein’s Unified Field Theory “Weak Force”, which describes
nuclear radioactivity.
Hartweg did post-graduate leading-edge studies at
Hartweg briefly introduces realistic near-future
energy source developments in his Zero Energy DesignTM book, and then elaborates
in detail about cost-effective easy-to-implement Zero Energy ideas throughout
his book and “Three Decades Of Lessons Learned” workshop presentation. As a
university freshman, Larry was quickly recognized for his unique abilities and
paid five times minimum wage to teach a graduate-level university engineering
lab classes when he was only 18. He later won
"Discovery
consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought."
-
Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Biochemical Research Scientist
Larry loves appreciation of his outstanding creativity. To
add entertainment value to his technical presentations, he has taken five
elective semesters of Improvisational Comedy classes, performed at The Comedy
Store in
Constructing his own 5,000 sq. ft. Zero Energy Home and
swimming in its 38-foot 90o F swimming pool with no energy bills
when it was well below freezing outside was a relatively EASY task for
Hartweg’s Energy Research Scientist abilities in 1979. He became the largest exhibitor and most popular speaker at
the National Energy Expositions. Larry has designed hundreds of near-Zero
Energy no-carbon-emission buildings from
The most powerful lesson that Larry’s father taught him, has
motivated his aggressive life:
”Lifelong Learning In An Ever
Expanding Universe Of Endless Possibilities.”
