Neven’s Recent Comments

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  Why go solar if there's little sunlight?

  How about a geothermal heat pump or something similar instead of solar? If there's so little sunlight in Seattle PV is a very inefficient way of producing energy/heating.

  Zumbi also highlights a major point: How much energy is needed to produce the materials for building the house? It's nice that stone and steel are recyclable but a lot more energy is expended on production than for instance on production of wood. And what about the insulation materials? Chemically derived insulation products take huge amounts of energy when compared to hemp or cellulose.

  I have an article here somewhere from a passive house magazine with info on exactly this kind of thing. If I can find it I'll post it here.On The hybrid solar home, part 2 posted 1 year, 3 months ago 28 Responses

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  Interesting but would like to see more

  I come and read here regularly but I had to sign up for this one. :-)

  Will you be writing more about this some time soon, biodiversivist? I'm very curious as to what your plans are.

  I'm sure you know about the passive house concept: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house. IMHO it's the best possible way to build a house. Up to now only 7500 passive houses have been built in Europe, which I find totally unbelievable. I feel this building concept should be the standard in the whole northern hemisphere.

  I'm planning on building a passive house myself in the near future. It'll be about 1200 square ft for a family of three, possibly five in the future (2800 square ft could easily house ten persons, that is if they're not American). With approximately 3500 Wp of solar panels on the roof I expect the house to be completely energy neutral.On The hybrid solar home, part 2 posted 1 year, 3 months ago 28 Responses