Just don't...

...call it a newspaper...
Reminiscent of Obamamania... the Globe and Mail is in full "eco-flight mode" this morning.

Today... it's miracle houses...

Homes are such energy guzzlers because they're not airtight. They're typically so full of cracks they replace all their inside air with cold outside air at the rate of four to five complete exchanges every hour, forcing furnaces into overdrive.

Of course, there's a solution for every problem, right?

Mr. Braden has built a house that is so airtight and insulated it needs next to no heating. The house is so efficient, he claims, that it "doesn't make any sense" to spend $4,000 on a furnace.

Anyway, Mr B. admits his house is so tight, he needs an air-exchanger... which... hang on a second... as I understand it...

"...replaces inside air with cold outside air multiple times every hour."

And, as someone who actually has a tight house and a high-end air-exchanger unit... lemme tell you, solar gain included... this guy ain't gonna go all winter on that claimed "single pick-up truck load" of wood.

You don't need to be a physicist to know that mixing the warm air inside your house with the minus 25 degree air in the rest of the world is a constant and totally one-sided losing battle. On another note... the only air-exchanger units I'm familiar with, run off the blower in the furnace... perhaps Mr. Braden has one of those new squirrel powered units.

The fact is, so much of this miracle technology is so far beyond the reach of ordinary people, it's really a joke to be touting them as actual real-world solutions.

This isn't news... it's propaganda...

Currently, the homes are at the demonstration stage, making them costly and unaffordable, except for the well heeled. The Toronto CMHC renovation cost about $85,000, to achieve a $1,000 cut in gas bills and a 60-per-cent cut in electricity use, but the hope is that economies of scale will eventually bring expenses down.

Because he wanted to live without accessing the electricity grid, Mr. Braden did spend $42,000 on his solar panels and wind turbine, an expenditure he confesses "is a little bit over the top," but his high-efficiency house doesn't rely on them.

So, despite the fact that the MSM has been screaming for the last little while about how we're all gonna be eating catfood in our retirement years... the Globe presents this one house as a shining beacon of environmental hope.

Speaking of hope, you'll notice that the main innovation in this home, the double wall with the unconventional vapour-barrier setup... is also totally experimental, and I quote...

"...he doesn't THINK he'll have condensation problems."

Again... this is all about "HOPE & CHANGE."

That remind you of anything?

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