Saturday, August 15, 2009

An Exceptional Residential Energy Retrofit



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Gordon and Sue took a drafty 1963
brick schoolhouse with almost no insulation and converted into a home that
could meet Passive House Institute standards, and that has a heating bill that
is 6% of a similar size code built home in their area.   Building a
new home with a thermal envelope this efficient would be an excellent
accomplishment -- doing this in a retrofit situation with all the challenges
that go with trying to bend an existing structure to your needs makes it much
more difficult.   Meeting nearly all of the space heating needs with
a good thermal envelope and passive solar heating was a very difficult
challenge in this tough 7,150 heating degree day climate in Ontario.  On
top of all this, the house looks normal and fits into its neighborhood just
fine.


Full details...

School2.jpg



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This is the most carefully thought
out and carefully executed energy retrofit I have seen.  


Some of the features of the retrofit include:
R40 Larsen Truss walls, triple glazed R6 super windows, glazing revamped for
passive solar heating, a new solarium, a hand crafted masonry heater, and much
more.  In addition to a very good thermal envelope, Gordon gives a lot of
attention to fire safety and to redundancy in the space heating system. 
Like most good designs,


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this
one is simple and robust without a lot of gadgetry.


School6LT.jpg

Gordon has done a very good job of describing the logic leading up to the key decisions on the insulating, glazing, passive solar, and thermal mass solutions used in the final design.  He has also described some of he things that did not go so well, and why -- all good information for would-be rettrofitters.

 

School5mh.jpg


The
full details include a 30 page description of the design and construction
process, an extensive photo gallery covering all stages of the project, and a
very detailed thermal analysis spreadsheet.
 


 Gary






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