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.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.
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.
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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6 comments:
I HOPE you will CHANGE the link to the article, since it gets a bunch of javabarf as it is. Just remove the space after "20081020.whomes20" in the URL and it will be fine.
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done... thx.
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Yes, this reminds me of Olivia Chow and a certain porn star lookalike, the name of whom I can't quite come up with right now.
They made a big to do about cycling everywhere, even to their jobs as Very Important Persons (councilors) here in Toronto.
What didn't get as much ink was the taxi cab that went from City Hall and their place with all their Very Important Files...
Hippies. They just don't get it, even now...
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"jag says... the taxi cab that went from City Hall and their place with all their Very Important Files"
that's what's so scary about "cheech & chow" and their socialist ilk... it's all about gestures, never about action.
the party of "let's fool ouselves, so we can sorta feel better."
i just don't get it.
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I hope they exchange air.
While CO2 likely doesn't have much of an environmental effect as the MSM states, I can assure them that my Medical Degree has taught me that too much CO2, and too little O2 (reduced from human respiration and cooking/furnaces) leads to death of the occupants.
Eventually you're going to have to exchange some air.
I'm all about airtight houses and energy conservation simply because I hate paying bills as much as the next guy. That being said I remember clearly the Leaky Condo problem in Vancouver due to air tight condensation build up.
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"langmann says... Eventually you're going to have to exchange some air."
at the halls, we try to heat exclusively with wood. we have an approximation of an r2000 house... it was owner built and not quite to spec... and to this end we have an $1800 air-exchanger unit integrated into our (backup) electric furnace.
in winter, if the exchanger is turned off... the fire will smolder and die out... and condensation will start to gather on the windows... the house is that tight.
it also serves as a carbon-monoxide safety valve... the air in the house is exchanged multiple times per hour, around the clock.
that being said... the cold always wins... the warm air inside our house may help a little... but an air exchanger is basically a big, not especially efficient plastic baffle.
but you need it... there's no way around it.
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