How energy efficient are your designs?

[JoeHo10]

I work for a new recently launched firm http://www.freegreen.com. We like many other emerging businesses are focusing solely on consumers who are interested in green designs (or simply free designs). From my experience most architects lack some of the technological knowledge and/or the collaborative team of engineers architects and business professionals to tackle green projects. Unfortunately for potential home builders, architects that do have this kind of knowledge and skillset can and do charge a premium for their designs.

If we want to make a dent in the market that accounts for "50% of all the energy we consume" we have to access as many consumers as possible. For those in the middle and lower ends of the housing market a custom architect is not an option. Most resort to stock house plans. At FreeGreen we are giving away very high quality house plans and incorporating and suggesting green products and building materials for the home (which we get paid to do but avoid integrity questions by being transparent, honest, and by providing LEED and NAHB standards). The "free" aspect draws consumers in (Hey the price is right) and the "green" aspect could be looked at as an added bonus. By choosing to only offer green plans and to give them away for free allows us to access a great number of people and to encourage green building practices.

While we don't have a minimum performance standard for all of our designs, we do set pretty high standards for ourselves. (if our designs weren't green we would probably be put out of business) We think that it is particularly important to educate consumers about the financial aspects of energy efficient design considerations. We include a snippet explaining the cash flows of design performance options so consumers can decide things like whether or not they will have a solar array.

P.S. sorry for the shameless plug. I am just trying to answer the question about how we go about energy efficient design

[csintexas]

[JoeHo10]

[modjohn]

Joe,

Interesting idea. You might want to have someone look at your site. I visited it. I could only find a couple of pages that did not give me a server error.

[csintexas]

[birgco]

Hi Joe, I think you're website is a terrific idea. We need enthusiasm, energy, and positive thinking (folks just like you and your associates) to further educate the public about reducing or eliminating the negative environmental impacts from building practices of the past and present. People do know what "green" is, but many need guidance and expertise to put the best ideas into practice. It will take everyone working together to make a difference and while there may not be a holy grail to solve our energy and environmental needs right now, we are on the right track. We have to start somewhere and it's encouraging to see new and innovative ideas reaching the world through cyber space. I applaud your efforts. Best of luck!

[csintexas]

They have a very basic understanding that using less energy is greener than using more energy or using low VOC materials is better than not but other that, even the designers here could not agree exactly what a green home looks like.

[modjohn]

The meaning of “green” is a very gray area. There are different shades or levels of greenness. Any Yes, many people will argue about how green a project should be.

It seems to me a logical way to determine greenness would be to put some performance numbers on every building. Specifying a specific level of thermal performance, energy usage, etc. You could also promote or require the use of green building materials that have a lower environmental impact or a very long life cycle, or possibly both.

With this type of approach, you allow design flexibility while attaining specific performance targets. I believe the codes used in California do allow the builder to deviate from some aspects of the code as long as the overall performance still meets the performance target.

[csintexas]

I'm not a big fan of bureaucracy so for me this would be a cumbersome solution to the problem.

[csintexas]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/05/AR2008060503434.html?referrer=emailarticle

[modjohn]

This guy who wrote the article is way to idealistic and not realistic. His ideas about taxing gasoline would never work to any extent in the US. None of our politicians have the balls to ever suggest or especially follow through with such a plan. They know they would be voted out of office as soon as possible and their replacements would repeal the taxes.

Most Americans will never make a change until their wallets force them to. As the article says, love does have a price.

[csintexas]

I agree. This is what we should have done a long time ago, the fact that we did not just demonstrates our national stupidity.

The US peaked about 40 years ago and we have been riding the crest of that wave ever since.

Here is an interesting new development:
http://www.pickensplan.com/

We continue to have a trade deficit of about 60 billion per month (720 billion per year) x 10 years = 7.2 trillion dollars. Add to this our current national deficit of 9.6 trillion dollars and a large baby boomer population beginning to retire and wanting good health care and anyone can see we are nearly in a crisis situation.

The economy is balanced on an edge right now. It may stay there for a while, it might fall slowly, or it could snap at any moment.


And what are we doing about this? Almost Nothing

[WorldDesigner]

[modjohn]

The web site is still broken. Anyone able to get past the first page?

[lekizz]

Certainly no access to anything insightful or useful yet.

I'm surprised they do not say anywhere on their website where they are based and what market/geography/climate they are catering for. Surely that is one of the first principles of ecological development, to be site specific. Even if they are based in the US (which I suspect), there are still wide variations in conditions from State to State, aren't there?

And from the illustrations of their stock housing, I can't see any clues as to how they are 'green'. Very odd!