Why All-Electric Homes Hold the Key to Our Energy Future

well good evening at least this evening here uh we are uh here to talk about all electric homes part of the uh series with new energy colorado and part of the 2020 metro denver green homes virtual tour so welcome glad you could join us and uh i am peter ewers and i've been an architect for my gosh 30-something years now and had my own firm ewers architecture for a little over 20 years and we're right here in golden colorado this is our office so welcome welcome to my office and uh our focus has always been on sustainability and uh uh just last year we announced that everything we designed from here on out is going to be uh uh focus on net zero energy and at very least all electric buildings and that's what we're gonna be talking about today fyi as you're watching this i'm going to start off by talking about why it's important to go all electric and and some of the state of our current electric systems in the united states and specifically here in colorado and then we're going to talk about what we can do in existing homes for uh to to make existing homes all electric or as you as you're remodeling your home and then at the end of the presentation i'm going to talk more about new home construction so i wanted you to know that as you're as you're watching i think the the information about existing homes is applicable to new homes as well and then and then the information for the new homes really uh you can't you can do some things in new home construction that you can't do in existing so uh viewers architecture mission has always been creating beautiful architecture that respects our natural resources and so that is just a part of who we are and our design goals as we're designing residences because we do both residential and commercial but as we're designing residences specifically we want to make sure that the flow through the house is very uh makes sense as casual and is not awkward the flow from inside to outside is very important get you get people outside the the outdoor living spaces especially here in colorado uh can be just wonderful so much of the year and then third is beauty we want to inject beauty into everything we do and fourth and definitely not least is the uh sustainability uh aspect so all four of those are equally important in our in our minds and uh and that sustainability has to be an integral part of everything that we do so the truth is this is a simple statement that i believe to be to be true is three parts we have the knowledge and technology now to create high efficiency high comfort low energy consumption all electric systems and buildings that's the first part i believe that to be true the second part of this true statement is that we also have electricity providers creating electricity using renewable energy and minimizing our fossil fuels with the future of one hundred percent renewable electricity flowing through our electric grid and then the third part of this statement is we must take advantage of our electric future and integrate all electric systems in our buildings now so we are ready for our future and so here's a little anecdote to explain that that true statement uh in 2003 december 2003 i got uh my first toyota prius and it was a great vehicle and it was brand new the 2004 model was groundbreaking and its fuel consumption was also groundbreaking in how it taught people uh to drive it had that real-time feedback that showed you exactly how much how much gasoline you were using per mile and uh helped helped us understand how we could drive to save uh to save fuel and and drive up that fuel economy it became kind of like a little video game right there in your car how how little gasoline can i use as i'm driving they called that the prius effect it was actually named it's a thing we've taken that prius effect into our buildings and have dashboards in our buildings to show how much energy the the building is using it's a great vehicle for the time and it's still a good good solid vehicle that's what we needed in 2004 we needed to drive down our fossil fuel consumption and that was uh that was important and but now now with the technology we have and with all electric uh uh technologies available we now have things like the tesla and so i traded in my my prius two years ago and got my model 3 tesla in 2018 almost two years ago to the day an all-electric vehicle that is so much fun to drive and again takes us to a new level that we haven't been at before and that new level now is that we have a vehicle that is even more fun to drive accelerates if you've been in an electric vehicle you know how fast they accelerate and and it kind of makes me laugh it's a fun car to drive uh but it also it's all electric so we're using zero gasoline and when i when i uh charge it here at my office with our solar panels i'm literally driving on sunshine and the other thing is that with this uh with this all-electric vehicle now oh we are getting 130 miles per gallon equivalent is the rating the rating of the gallon that i was getting with the prius to now 130 miles per gallon equivalent so we have upped the ante in terms of the amount of energy that we're using and it's all electric and that is what we can also do with our buildings and that's why i'm gonna uh explain to you as we as we move forward here so let's look at the electricity trends in our country this is a chart of all of the energy used in the united states from 1950 to about 2017. and you can see that that curve goes up and up and up here and this is 2004 when when the toyota prius came out and uh you can see it's trending downward now a little bit and that's a that's a good thing right so you can see here when we look at today or in this case the end of 2017 it's a couple of years old but it's it's gets the point across our overall energy use it is decreasing slightly also the renewables that's that green that green on top you can see that the renewables is slightly expanding so they are increasing you can also see that the carbon-based fuels uh are trending downward uh also which is a good thing so another chart to show this is 2001 versus 2019 so 2001 on the left that blue is uh showing our overall this is just electricity the previous slide was all energy so it included petroleum this is only electric use in the united states so you can see from 2001 to 2019 trending down slightly which is really no small feat when you think about it because think of how much how many more buildings we have how many more things are using electricity over those two decades right so we've increased what we're using electricity for but at the same time we've actually decreased the amount of electricity that we're using so that's a good thing coal this is probably the best part of this chart coal has decreased about 50 percent in those two decades and coal is is uh more of a hazard for our for our environment so it's great to see that decreasing natural gas has increased so that's as cold goes down natural gas has come up but it hasn't it hasn't come up as much as coal has dropped so we're at least doing natural gas is kind of that stepping stone for us as we transition to all electric nuclear and hydro those really haven't changed we're not building any new nuclear plants we're not building any new huge dam projects uh that's damn without the n uh huge dam projects and then but here's here's what's exciting we see wind showing up on this chart that wind is not on the chart in 2001 we we see it showing up now and solar is actually uh making enough uh enough electricity to show up on this chart showing all of the electric use uh generation uh in the united states so that is really exciting and that is that is why we need to uh be really focusing on electricity so uh here's some uh information also that came out uh in from excel energy this was an article in the denver post uh last year or actually two years ago i guess and what they did was excel energy put out this call for for proposals to build renewable energy either wind or solar and they would they these companies would provide that energy to excel and what happened was the electricity costs from wind and solar with uh with backup with battery battery backup the store battery storage those prices came in so low it astounded them and that has continued over these last two years wind and solar costs are dropping so greatly that they can build uh wind and solar with uh with storage for less than they can even operate the existing coal burning power plants so and here's the thing so this is straight off excel energy's website they are they are planning on being 80 percent renewable by the year 2030 2030 that's that's a decade less than a decade away now so within 10 years eighty percent of the power flowing throughout excel's territory which is uh most of colorado goes up into uh up into the midwest eighty percent of that power flowing through our power grid is going to be generated from renewable energy and by 2050 they plan to be a hundred percent so how can we not and oh here's the thing is it's levels they never imagined a decade ago it is turning people's heads do you remember when leds came out you know what 15 years ago maybe leds were were really you know coming on the market and people were saying wow this is going to be the future of of light of electric light it's going to replace fluorescence it's going to replace incandescence and yeah it in in two decades it's going to be it's really going to replace everything and it happened in just a few years it happened so fast it spun people's heads nobody predicted how fast leds were going to take over the market but they have and that's what they're seeing with wind and solar this is all happening so much faster and i believe that the electric car market is going to happen much faster than anyone's predicting as well so so if we're going to have electricity flowing through our grid within the next 10 years that is nearly all from renewable energy what can we do about it what can what is it that we can do uh in our own lives in our own homes to prepare for that what what is it that we need to do well like i said we're going to start talking about remodeling what can we do with our existing homes that that can make a difference and a couple of things that we can do is install high efficiency all electric appliances and systems and then also we can increase insulation and tighten the exterior envelope and those are things that we can do as we're remodeling as we're doing things as you're replacing an appliance in your home then for new construction we can now now today we can do this you can insist that your new building is all electric and is net zero energy we have absolutely the capable capability of doing that and it need not cost a lot more money so we're going to go into more depth i'm going to start with the remodeling and we're going to talk about some remodeling ideas uh so we'll start with uh high efficiency uh all electric appliances and systems okay as you're working through as you're remodeling your home look at installing high efficiency uh all electric appliances and systems like your building heat so uh this this uh furnace here this is what we affectionately call scorched air uh it's a uh forced air furnace or scorched air furnace i have a lot of these in in basements around colorado and so this is using natural gas typically to create a flame that the air is flowing across okay well we can replace that with something that looks like this and this is a uh it's an air source heat pump system so it has this unit on the outside looks kind of like an air conditioner right but it creates both heating and cooling and it is a one-to-one replacement for your furnace so i'm not saying go out and throw away your furnace if you just replaced it last year or five years ago even but when your furnace is done when it's ready to be replaced replace it with an all-electric central unit that uses uh it is mini split technology so mini split technology we usually think of as looking like this that's uh that's what many splits first came out like maybe you've seen it in a hotel room you've been in or maybe you maybe you've seen it in in someone else's home or your own home but they don't need to look like that anymore now they can look like this this is a little cassette that we use we install it above the ceiling and it with a little simple duct work it's really nice to have one of these on on each floor of a home so that you have a thermostat for each floor and two or three of those can run off of one exterior unit so that's another another option another option is a ceiling cassette where it looks kind of like a bathroom fan but it's hooked to that outside unit so all of those all four of these these are all ways that you can create heating and cooling in your home based on this exterior unit so but if you've already got the ductwork and you've already got your your furnace that looks like that old one on the right then you can you can one to one replace that with with that new central unit so mini split technology is here it's doing great uh there is no reason not to not to use that in our homes another area where we use a lot of natural gas is water heating and so this is an old old water heater if you look closely at this photo you can see it's the lines are already cut we're moving that out so that we can move in an all-electric water heater now these water heaters uh it's a it's again the mini split type technology air source heat pump it takes takes the heat out of the air and and turns that heat using using the air source heat pump technology to create the hot water for your home so it does make the space that it's in cold there are some systems out there in fact we just installed one in our office here last year where uh they're ductable so you have you conduct in the air uh the the warm air that you need you can duct it from somewhere say from behind the refrigerator where you don't want that hot air right uh and you can duct the the cold air that's being created you conduct that to say the crawl space or someplace uh that you don't want it you could even duct it to use get some free cooling during the summer and then have a damper to direct it to someplace else during the winter when you don't want to be dumping cold air into your living room so airsource heat pumps currently xcel energy is giving a 400 rebate to install an air source heat pump in your home so uh ours was 1300 last year minus the 400 rebate 900 for a new uh very high efficiency water heater i should take this opportunity to explain these these many uh the mini split technology the air source heat pump technology are typically 300 percent and more efficient so they have what's called the coefficient of performance the cop is is typically around 3.3 3.4 depending upon the system and so that means that for every one unit of electricity that you put into the air source heat pump technology you're getting three 3.4 uh units of in this case hot water uh or in the furnace you're getting three 3.4 units of hot air or cooled air out of that so rather than yes we have electric water heaters we've had electric water heaters for years we've never put one in one of our projects because we always use natural gas because natural gas was so much more efficient those old electric water heaters are 100 efficient for every unit of electricity you put in you get one unit of hot water out these with the with the air source heat pump technology you put in one one unit of electricity and you get three units or more of hot water out so that is why this is so exciting to have this kind of technology available to us now that wasn't available just a few years ago so when we can use all electric systems that have that kind of that kind of efficiency now we've really made some leaps and bounds and we've and we've got to get this technology into our homes i i know hearing something that is 300 percent uh efficient as might be a little hard to believe but it's true and and this technology has been around uh in in europe and in uh in the uh uh far east for uh quite a number of years and is making more more gains now in the united states and and it really has become much more efficient we fine-tuned the technology now and uh if if you don't believe it google it uh check out the coefficient of performance of a heat pump water heater uh or mini split and also it's a little unbelievable how it feels when i'm driving my tesla and when i get into that and and i take off and to know that i the 130 miles per hour or 830 miles per gallon equivalent uh is is pretty unbelievable but it is true and that technology all these technologies that we're talking about today are are now tried and true they're proven technologies they're not they're no longer way out there so check it out and everything i'm saying has been absolute fact so another place that we typically use natural gas in a lot of our homes is cooking and a lot of people love the gas cooktop this is actually my my cooktop in my home i love natural gas but we now have a great replacement a great all-electric replacement for natural gas we don't have to have those old electric cooktops that take forever to heat up and then and then stay hot for forever and you've got to move the pan off this is an induction cooktop and uh using magnets and maybe a little bit of mumbo jumbo but they're they're really amazing they they are instant on instant off uh you set the temperature and immediately it's at that temperature and uh they are still a little bit on the pricey side but i think as they gain more and more traction those are going to drop in price and become more and more used in fact a couple of places i've stayed recently have had those so i've had the opportunity to cook on them and they really are are quite wonderful the only downside i think i've heard on those is you can't flambe because you can't you can't tilt the pan if you tilt the pan if you break that uh break the uh the seal between the the bottom of the pan and the cooktop you won't be getting any heat but so uh and then lastly our clothes dryer and a gas clothes dryer for years has been the most efficient well second to maybe going outside and hanging your clothes out to dry outside but but the the gas dryer has uh always been the more more efficient option uh but now we have that same heat heat pump technology and gas in dryers so you can get a heat pump dryer these are i would say still on the uh the upswing they're still learning about them they're still on the expensive side so uh if you're but if you are replacing your your dryer and you've got uh well an electric or gas dryer look at the the heat pump dryer they're definitely worth a look and i think in coming years they will be more and more the norm rather than the exception so some more remodeling ideas uh increasing insulation tightening the exterior envelope so again as you're remodeling as you're considering doing work on your home look at window replacement so we have super efficient windows that are available now alpin is a company right here in colorado makes a fantastic uh fantastic window that is actually you can get them all the way up to r11 so that's a u value of 0.09 and so the u value is the inverse of the r value so a 0.09 u value would be about an r 11 or greater and those are the their top line windows they also have they have other other lines that are i think they start at about an r r5 or u value of 0.2 and those are maybe a little bit more affordable but if you're replacing your windows think about those or there are a lot of what's becoming very popular these days are european windows uh and they are a little bit on the on the pricey side typically more expensive than the alpine but beautiful windows from from europe that also have those very very high high r values low u values if you are thinking about replacing your windows think about that how do those r values compare to a standard wall yeah so if you think about uh the window and the windows typically been the weak link in our walls so if we're if we're building a standard wall to code is going to be about an r20 so and right now code for a window is a u value of 0.31 so about an r value of 3. so you've got this r3 window with an r20 wall and so that window is going to feel cold and you're going to get drafts from that window but if you can get that window up to an r5 or r10 now that window no longer feels cold that you can put your hand on the glass of this window right here even when it's zero degrees outside and it will not feel cold so it's a comfort issue as well as a an energy saving issue you will be more comfortable in a home with super insulated windows super efficient windows exterior siding replacement right that's a normal thing people do what can we do when we're doing that well that's a great opportunity to install exterior rigid insulation around your entire home if you are considering a a siding replacement take and and uh put exterior rigid insulation it will be a continuous insulation which is so much better than just the insulation between the studs right that's what we typically have we have an r6 or a 2x6 wall with r19 insulation between the studs and then our exterior sheathing well the studs are actually a thermal break so you don't really have an r19 wall you've got to take every every 16 inches you've got to take that inch and a half stud out of there so that r19 wall might really only be like an r15 or 16 wall when we get this exterior rigid insulation say you do two inches of insulation that might be an r10 now that is a real r10 wall or r10 is is continuous so you add that to say your r15 that you already have now you've got an r25 wall that would be quite an improvement in the comfort and the energy use of your home also another way to do that is to use we use a lot of these zip sheathing so this is a poly iso insulation with exterior with the sheathing bonded to it and then the house wrap bonded to that so it's all comes all in one package you put that up and then you're ready to put your siding right over that another way to do good exterior continuous insulation and by the way these things i'm talking about as remodels of course can be used in new construction so and something else we do regularly we re-roof right roofing typically is going to last 20 25 years something like that and then you're going to need to re-roof if you've got a typical asphalt shingle roof we tend to try not to use asphalt shingle roofs we use things like in in our office this is what our office looked like before we re-shingled last year and this is what it looks like now these are actually a polyurethane shingle sculpted to look like a a shake shingle because on this historic structure that's what would have been there originally we really tried to stay away from asphalt shingles or a petroleum product but when you're when you are re-roofing you can consider putting on solar panels on your roof if you've got a 20 year old roof do not run out and put photo will take panels on it because then in five years when you have to re-roof you have to take those solar panels off but when you're re-roofing consider photovoltaics and plan for it another good option on roofs we use we use a lot on our project our standing seam metal roofs the standing seam metal is a great great product it's more hail resistant especially than asphalt shingle but the standing seam we can clip uh clip the the uh supports for the photovoltaic photovoltaic panels to the standing seam metal and not have to penetrate not have to put in these uh these penetrations through your brand new roof so standing seam metal is a definitely a preferred option and i would say that another plug for not putting in asphalt shingles is asphalt shingles are going to be the most susceptible to hail which here in colorado is a big problem so may not be in your environment but in colorado hale is the colorado gemstone they call it so more remodeling ideas replacing lights with led that's a no-brainer replacing plumbing fixtures with low flow fixtures looking for energy star appliances that's a real thing when you go to buy a toaster or a tv or a computer look for that energy star label that means it's going to use less electricity than that its counterparts than the competitors low voc finishes that's volatile organic compounds so you create a healthier indoors you're not you're not breathing those organic compounds recycled materials materials that can be recycled at the end of our lives all things all things to uh to consider carbon sequestering materials that's woods as wood as trees grow right they absorb they absorb carbon and that if we can use that wood and the things that were uh are going to be around for a long time we've sequestered that carbon uh locally made products is important so you have less shipping long lasting materials and products not buying the cheap stuff that uh that you're going to have to replace in five years but investing in something better that lasts longer low embodied energy is another thing you can look for and this is not running off the bottom of the screen on purpose avoiding redless materials chemicals it's this list goes on and on sustainability is a part of everything we do every decision we make uh or so many decisions we make every day there are sustainable alternatives that that are are better and so as we remodel as we do go through our lives think about those choices it can be as simple as am i going to ride my bike two miles down the road or am i going to get my car and drive it so then let's talk a little bit about new construction ideas so i would say everything we've talked about to this point can be remodeling ideas or new construction but when we think about new construction we have some more options than we have just in in remodeling so first passive solar and sustainable design techniques uh let's talk about that just a little bit what can we do as we're starting to think about building a new home what are the what are the things we want to think about well here's one we want to string it out long in the east-west orientation so this is a fun project we did a few years ago where the client came to us with this sort of uh this sort of plan they had already sketched up it was a really kind of clunky very squarish plan but they had this great site with south-facing orientation a south-facing view and we can take advantage of that by stringing out long in that east-west direction and having having that sun filter more into the house and then put the things on the back of the house on the north side that don't need that sun they're not places that you are all day long they're uh and we can use that sun both for daylight and for building heat then so this is what that house looked like fortunately they they liked the uh the scheme where we strung it out long in the east west direction it was actually off-grid it was a real benefit to have that east-west orientation so if you're looking for a site to build a new home try to get one that has good south uh south orientation where you can where you can string out long in that east-west direction and here's the here's the reason we do that because the south sun is so easy to control it's just the way uh the way nature is that our summer sun here in colorado reaches its peak at about 74 degrees and so with not too big of an overhang we can cut out that summer sun so in in inside the house uh during the summer when you don't want that sun beating into your house it's not you're cutting it out with a simple overhang and then in the winter when when it's uh cool out and you want that sun to come in it's that sun is down at a 26 degree angle off the horizon and uh and that's the that's the highest it gets uh during the during the in the winter solstice here in colorado uh that that sun is penetrating into your house and heating uh heating your home uh with uh passive solar so that is why that east-west orientation is important the the east sun is is hard to control the west sun is really is a terrible problem for overheating homes and here in colorado if you're out on the plains and you've got that beautiful view to the west of the mountains it's really it is very it is problematic so getting that getting that south sun that south orientation strung out along the east-west direction and uh and the proper shading and when you do have a tall glass wall like that that was a two-story glass wall we inject a solar shade in the middle of it so that we cut out uh cut out that sun coming into the lower windows because it's hard if you've got a really tall glass wall it's hard to get out far enough to shade that whole wall in the summer it's a very typical detail for us on many of our homes so thermal mass would be the next step uh hard to add thermal mass when you're remodeling but if you you're building a new home you can think about using materials that uh that will absorb that sun because here's what happens is the the sun beats in and even during the winter that sun comes in and if you don't have anywhere for that sun to go if it's just warming up the air and and the the materials aren't aren't a solid like stone or concrete material that that sun can soak into it's going to immediately overheat the the home and then when that sun goes away it's immediately going to get cold so what we want to do is we want to store that store that solar energy and we do that with thermal mass so this home had a concrete floor it's got a stone fireplace this stone wall at the back of the living room all places where when that sun beats in it's not going to immediately overheat the home it's going to it's going to warm up those really solid thick materials and then and then as this as the sun goes away then that those thick materials will give that heat back to the home throughout the evening and so thermal mass is very important in a passive solar design another idea for new construction is insulation well beyond code requirements uh code is is the minimum you have to do code right but we uh here are our rules of thumb that we use this is our goal on on each home that we're designing r5 or better for the windows so that's a u-value of 0.2 uh r10 below the slab so it's just that the numbers double as you go up 5 10 20 40 80. uh but they're good good rules of thumb the r10 is below the slab uh in the whether you're in the basement or whether it's a slab on grade at uh for your first floor our 10 below the slab is a good minimum are 20 walls below grade so in the basement where the the the walls are already buffered by uh by the soil right the soil is not going to get here in colorado it's not going to get below about 45 degrees so an r20 wall is okay down at that level once you get to walls above grade where it could be zero degrees or colder outside we'd like to have r40 as our goal we will not do anything less than r30 and r40 is our goal and then for the roof uh our 80 is our goal again we won't do less than r60 but r80 is r80 is better we feel like especially the r40 walls and the r80 roof going above that you probably have a little bit of diminishing returns you can you can do an r 100 roof it's not there's certainly nothing wrong with that incidentally code is r3 for windows below slab not really required except for the edges i can't tell you how many times we get the contractor calling and saying yeah we don't want to do that under slab insulation it's not required by code it's like no you need to do it r20 uh walls below grade um i think what code actually is for that not sure our 40 walls above grade code is r20 in our environment and the roof is r49 required so go well above whatever environment you're in i'd encourage you to go well above the uh the code requirements and code is getting better and better but still not good enough the roof is typically not insulated it's are you talking about the attic in most cases yeah yeah the attic or depending upon yeah okay yeah can you make sure the distinction is yeah okay and that r80 for the roof uh we're talking about whether if you have an attic space that insulation might be right at the bottom of the attic but if you have a vaulted ceiling uh then that that insulation is going to be a part of a part of your roof structure so in whatever way that r80 is somewhere between your upper ceiling and the and the roof so that's that's what we're calling roof insulation and to get those levels of insulation there are a lot of different ways you can go a lot of different products uh you don't you can use fairly standard construction but you can also consider structural insulated panels known as sips icfs are insulated concrete forms uh there are a couple of different uh there are several different types of icfs out there most of them are a polystyrene there are also products out there that don't use any polystyrene which is nice this this home here actually uh we used icfs in that home as well as straw bale uh but they used it was a fast wall or durasol our two products that are uh they they do not have any polystyrene in them you can check those out double stud wall construction we use a lot on a lot of our homes continuous exterior rigid insulation it's going to be one or the other sometimes both if we're doing kind of a standard construction it's either double stud walls or continuous exterior insulation the zip sheathing is one form of that continuous exterior and straw bale straw bale is fun it's another way to sequester carbon straw is a waste material that is once it once it degrades or is burned is going to release the carbon back into the atmosphere by by sequestering it into a wall like this that's the back wall of that house uh we are we are sequestering that carbon plus we're creating a nice uh well insulated wall and uh so building it tight uh is is we believe the right way to to build and there are a lot of lot of ways to do that making sure every little crack gets sealed up around the exterior one way one way to do that is arrow barrier we've used this on a couple of homes now and it's a great great product if you think of duct sealing when uh there's for a long time we've had this uh ability to spray into ductwork and it will go and and fill all the cracks in the ducts well this uh product actually they spray it throughout the entire home you can't do it as a remodel again it's got to be done when you're building the home uh and it's typically done at the end of uh the end of uh chipboard when when once you have the entire home complete inside then they set up these spray nozzles and spray throughout the home so we recently completed a home where we got the air changes down to under 0.5 air changes per hour at 50 pascal using using this so it's a great uh great option for new construction it's surprisingly not that expensive and to really tighten up your home can be a kind of a fun fun way to do that an easy easy way to do that and uh energy recovery ventilators or our conditioning ervs are are a part of every project that we do so as we build tighter and tighter uh what we're actually doing is you're sealing up that home and who wants to live in a uh a sealed environment right we need fresh air as as we breathe we're we're using up that fresh air and so we need to we need to bring in fresh air but if it's zero degrees outside going and opening up a window is not what we want to do right so we want to continually have fresh air entering the home and that's where the ervs come in so energy recovery ventilators also hrvs is another term heat recovery ventilator the erv does both heating cooling and it does the moisture the humidity in the air it recaptures that so ervs work by taking the exhausts the air from inside the home and brings in the outside air uh and at that same time it transfers the heating or cooling that you're exhausting and puts that into the air coming in so say it's zero degrees outside it's 70 degrees inside you're exhausting your 70 degree air and bringing in zero degree air but you transfer that heating the the heat that is in that exhaust air you transfer it to the incoming air and that's what that's what the erb does it recovers that ventilation that you've already paid to to to heat up and captures that again so creates a very comfortable home look if it's nice out and you want to open up your windows great but who wants to open up the windows when it's 100 degrees and humid outside or it's zero degrees and freezing outside and this will this will allow your home to be comfortable 365 days a year so a little hard again to integrate this into a remodel but in new construction absolutely something that we put in every home the cerv by by the way is adds it's an erv with a conditioning element so it basically uses uh it uses like a little mini split technology to heat and cool the air to uh because if you if you do have zero degrees coming in and you're exhausting 70 degree air you can't bring that zero degree all the way up to 70 but bring it close but then the the conditioning uh part uh a cerv will raise that raise that air uh to the the level that you want to actually bring into the home but there are a lot of ways to deal with this uh and a lot of good people out there that can help you with that and uh so the all electric and efficient systems this is just a re uh a replay of what we already saw when we're talking about remodels same thing so this is the this is that uh that unit that sits up above the ceiling and you have a little duct work running around uh that's the mini split technology the the air source heat pump uh the heat pump water heaters uh the the dryers the heat pump dryers and of course our our induction cooktops those things that we already talked about that's going to that's going to help you create your all-electric home which is so important to uh to getting to zero energy so and then you plan for photovoltaics this is uh this is that house uh that i showed with the straw bale it doesn't happen by accident you got to plan it you've got to plan where are the photovoltaics going to be they don't have to be on the roof they could be ground mounted in fact here in colorado when we're building up in the mountains we prefer ground mounting because uh when the snow when the snow lands on that roof and if it stays on there for a week you're not generating any electricity with those pv panels where if it's ground mounted you can go grab your broom and brush them off and and uh and you're creating electricity again so uh there are all different ways to do it but it needs to be thought about and planned during the design phase so finally i just want to touch on uh this is this is everything i've talked about today is available now and it is uh with those technologies we can create all electric net zero energy homes but there's even stuff coming in the future that's going to help us like photovoltaics that are built into other materials and they don't just have to look like a pv panel or improve battery technology that's getting better and better and going to make our houses more efficient improve mini split technology the magic box is is what i'm waiting for that's a like a cerv but it takes care of the entire home you don't need anything else just this one system that's your erv and all of your your uh building heating and cooling phase change materials uh there's another uh another uh session that you can watch that's a part of this where they used base change materials in a home it's they're actually available now but getting better and better uh vacuum sealed panels uh that's mostly a roof roof insulation but they get to nearly r30 per inch yeah you heard me right r30 per inch so a two inch vacuum sealed panel you've got your r60 roof already there improved automation technologies we have good automation it still can be a little frustrating to use and you kind of feel like you're a geek uh trying to trying to figure it all out so uh looking forward to seeing automation technologies improve solar gardens we've got some here in colorado so if you can't get photovoltaics on your roof like my house which has too big too big of trees around invest in a solar garden as they become available the dc power grid that might be the one that's reaching the most some people are talking about building a dc power grid throughout our entire country but across the country we definitely need to have that electric car supercharger network tesla has done a great job with theirs but it doesn't work for other automobiles so uh looking forward to seeing more and more of that so so with all of that i would conclude with saying that in 2004 we saw the advent of the prius effect and we were able to figure out how to save energy and use as little as possible and we kind of were hoping that was enough right and now in 2020 we have the tesla effect we can use all electric and efficient systems we can genera generate our own electricity and we can have fun doing it so let's do that together thank you you

Channel: Colorado Renewable Energy Society (CRES)

Views: 971

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Id: 1gWNLsOyvmY

Length: 47min 13sec (2833 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 03 2020