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| First application of Solar Laminates on a certified Passive House  Whirlwind Solar from Houston announced, in conjunction with Corey Saft, an Architecture Professor at University of Louisiana at Lafayette, the first application of Solar Laminates on a certified 'Passive House' home. It is the first such home across the South and West Coast. Keihly Moore, with the Illinois-based Passive House Institute US that gives the certification, says of Saft: "He is the first in the South. He's blazing a trail." The use of solar photovoltaics, along with the Passive House design criteria of 90% reduction in energy usage over traditional homes built to current codes, makes this an affordable zero-energy prototype for the extreme conditions in the hot and humid South as well as anywhere else.The project incorporated many innovative thermal techniques to reduce energy consumption. Following the general Passive House strategy, the home is super-insulated and extremely well sealed, making the construction act more like a thermos to preserve the conditioned air inside and consequently requiring much less overall conditioning of air. As an analogy, think of plugging in your coffee maker to heat the water to make your coffee but then transferring the coffee to a thermos to maintain the temperature throughout the day. Once you cool or heat your house the most efficient way to maintain the temperature is not with additional electricity but through a well sealed and insulated container. In terms of energy consumption the results are obvious – and this is what the Passive House philosophy is all about. Combine this with the efficiency of Whirlwind's solar laminate panels and you quickly see how in the first month of operation this building was a zero-energy consumer. The systems in the house are all standard and readily available but it is their integration into a whole house strategy that makes the final product so efficient and unique. The primary system is based on a a small (1 ton) mini-split air-conditioning system and the Ultimate Air RecoupAerator Energy Recovery Ventilator (ERV). With 95% energy recovery, MERV 12 filtration, and dehumidification the ERV is the black box in the system that makes it all possible. In conjunction with this primary strategy we also use an air-to-water heat pump to supplement cooling and dehumidification as well as provide hot water. This house was an experiment on many fronts. As well as being the first home anywhere on the South or West Coast to meet the stringent energy requirements of the Passive House standard, it is also designed to be a cost effective urban prototype. With a footprint of less than 800 sq ft and a total livable square footage of 1200 sq ft, it is a 3 bedroom 2 bath designed for great density. Its long, thin and tall form allows it to be easily converted to a row house or flats above a commercial base on any downtown street. The rich spatial and experiential qualities could easily be maintained in any dense urban situation while the energy requirements would be reduced because of the shared party-walls and reduced number of exterior walls. With these efficiencies and a larger roof area to strategically group the solar array, we could easily develop this project into a net-energy producing urban block. The solar array, which is laminated to the Whirlwind Weather Snap metal system, is sized at 3.264 kW. The solar laminate system enabled some of Corey Saft's students to more fully understand photovoltaic's and at the same time be involved with some cutting edge technology. write your comments about the article :: © 2010 Construction News :: home page |