Building or maintaining your dream home prompts countless details to consider regarding budget, functionality and overall design. If sustainability is a priority, energy efficiency will also be top of mind. Despite the many products and technologies on the market promising to lower your carbon footprint, one issue reigns supreme: temperature control.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that “on average, more than half – 52% in 2020 – of a household’s annual energy consumption is for just two energy end uses: space heating and air conditioning. These uses are mostly seasonal; are energy-intensive; and vary significantly by geographic location, home size and structure, and equipment and fuels used.”
All of this energy consumption generates carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming and the sundry environmental issues that come with it. Encouragingly, the EIA reports we are already heading in the right direction: Household energy use has recently declined, thanks in part to better insulation, improved material and more efficient heating, cooling and appliances.
CreteHouse, designer: Washington University in St. Louis
That’s where passive housing comes in. “A passive house is a very energy-efficient building that achieves extremely high levels of performance by conserving energy through airtightness and superinsulation,” says Ryan Abendroth, co-founder and principal consultant at Build Zero Consulting.
Abendroth grew up in St. Louis and serves as a senior lecturer at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. He has designed and constructed passive-certified homes for Solar Decathlon competitions including the award-winning project that garnered Abendroth an invitation to the Passive House Institute U.S. Now, he serves as a senior lecturer at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, where he oversaw the design of CreteHouse.
At Build Zero Consulting, Abendroth assists clients in developing energy-efficient, innovative solutions for residential, commercial and institutional buildings. “Passive buildings have many benefits for both the local city and global climate,” Abendroth says. “Less energy use has many additional advantages such as less pollutants from the production of energy at the power plant. It can also reduce the need for additional electricity capacity to help during peak energy use times.”
A passive house designer or consultant like Abendroth optimizes insulation and air sealing, window location and shading, thermal mass location and type, and auxiliary heating and cooling systems.
“Airtightness is the No. 1 thing you can do to save energy and is often overlooked in conventional construction,” Abendroth says. “An ideal level of airtightness is that you could flip the house upside down and float it like a boat!”
If you’re not starting fresh on a new build but still want to make your home more sustainable, replacing appliances with ones that are Energy Star-rated is a good start. Heat pump dryers, for example, dry at lower temperatures and use half as much energy as a vented model.
“Other straightforward options include choosing high efficacy LED light fixtures,” Abendroth adds. “For heating and cooling, heat pump systems should be used if the house is all electric. A heat pump water heater is often the best choice; and if gas is being used, a high-efficiency condensing gas water heater is a good option.”
Build Zero Consulting, buildzeroconsulting.com
Top photo by Dennis Schroeder; CreteHouse designed at Washington University in St. Louis
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