Just how smart are smart homes?

When I first lived in Tokyo in the mid 1980's I remember being out somewhere and a friend got up to use the telephone. It was a payphone since this was before the age of mobiles. He didn't say anything, but punched in some numbers then put the phone down. He told us he'd just started the bath running at home.

If you don't know what a payphone is,
you probably won't know what this is either

This seemed like science fiction to me with my perspective from the primitive plumbing of England. Indeed it was science fiction compared to the Tokyo flat I was staying in where there was no running hot water, and the bath had to be filled with cold water, then heated by circulating water through a gas burner. Once, after a long day, I got into one such bath while the heater was still on. I dozed off in the bath and woke up very hot, and when I moved I got even hotter since I had been cooling the water immediately around me.

Most bath heaters had simple mechanical timers in the switches, so they would not overheat the bath. Even in the 1980s some of them could be programmed to switch on at a certain time, so the tub would be hot when you got home.

We can't call our bath on the phone, or send it text messages, but it can be programmed to come on at a certain time, and it does know how to say "I'm filling up the bath" and will happily tell us "The bath's ready". Unfortunately it doesn't know how to say "Whoops, I ran out of water so your bath is luke warm." And the phrase, "Hey, you forgot to put the plug in, you idiot" is also missing from its vocabulary. In both cases, the light just goes off and it remains silent. It's really not very smart.

So how smart are smart houses? Not very, is the short answer. Will they help us to save energy? Our bath could have saved us a few hundred litres of hot water if it just knew to tell us that it wasn't filling up and we'd left the plug out. So excuse me if I'm skeptical of the age of the smart house and the brighter future offered us by the internet of things.

If you want energy efficiency, then it is dumb things that will deliver: geometry, wall thickness, window quality, airtightness and attention to detail in the construction.

You can get gadgets if you want, and they may make your life better, but if you want to save energy start with the thermal envelope. You can stick as much as you like onto the envelope later. This applies to solar panels too, which are probably a good idea to add to your house, but they will not make your house more energy efficient. Putting insulation under the roof is a much higher priority than putting solar panels on top of it.

But don't just take my word for it. In Bringing users into building energy performance: Learning to live in a smart home, Tom Hargreaves, Charlie Wilson & Richard Hauxwell-Baldwin tell us that smart home devices are "technically and socially disruptive", are limited by the householder who is using them, and have a steep learning curve with few people to help you climb it. They also find "little evidence that smart home technologies will generate substantial energy savings and, indeed, there is a risk that they may generate forms of energy intensification."

Low Energy Building Course - Open to the public!

Not only can students at my university take the 15-week Low Energy Building course, it's also open to members of the public!

You can find the syllabus here. And more information about other courses here.

(1)授業のねらい	Buildings use over one third of all energy consumed in Japan, as in many other developed countries. In a world of increasing population and limited fossil fuel reserves, reduction in building energy consumption is important. As well as drastically reducing consumption, low energy buildings can be more comfortable, more healthy and less expensive over their lifetime. This course will introduce students to the principles, the practicalities, and the future of low-energy building. 他の先進国と同様、日本で消費されているエネルギーの3割は、住宅で使われています。人口が増加し、化石燃料が限られてくる世界では、省エネルギー住宅が必要となります。エネルギー消費を減らすことで、居住者に快適で健康的な暮らしをもたらし、建物の耐用年数においても経済的です。本講義では、省エネ住宅の仕組み、その実用性と将来について紹介します。
(2)授業の概要	This course will show how simple scientific principles affect buildings, and how insulation, airtightness and good windows can lead to houses with very low energy consumption. We will see how the use of solar power can make buildings that produce energy. We will look at low-energy buildings around the world, including the German Passivhaus standard. We will also consider the design process, including compromise, optimisation and guesstimates.
(3)授業のキーワード	環境、物理学、建築、省エネ、熱力学、太陽光発電
(4)授業計画	1. What is a low-energy building? 2. What is energy? 3. Insulation and thermal envelopes 4. Compound insulation and thermal bridges 5. Why do we feel hot or cold? 6. Air and water 7. Windows 8. Ventilation 9. Windows 2.0 10. Energy standards and low-energy building around the world 11. To zero energy and beyond: Buildings as solar generators 12. Passivhaus 13. Economics and ecology, embodied carbon and life cycle analysis 14. Presentations 15. Review This plan may change to meet the needs of the class
(5)成績評価の基準	Participation: 20% Online assignments, quizzes, presentations: 80% Students must complete online activities to pass this course. Students will be expected to participate in class and give presentations.
(6)事前事後学習の内容	Additional information will be made available online.
(7)履修上の注意	The class will mainly be conducted in English. It will be possible for students to ask questions, complete assignments and give presentations in Japanese. 本講座は主に英語で行いますが、受講生からの質問、課題の提出、発表は日本語でも結構です。

Top Ten Top Tens

I've already posted my own top ten tips for building a passivhouse and posted about Alessandro
Merigo's but I've now added eight more to give you a top ten of top tens. Please note that most of these will just appear on one internet page, and none of these are click-bait with a button for the next page hidden between several traps.

1. Here are my ten tips for building a house.​

2. Alesandro Merigo's ideas are here:

3. Dieter Ram has ten principles for good design, which apply when designing anything.

4. Interestingengineering.com has an engineering perspective, which is close to my own ideas in
Ten Amazing Tips for Building Energy Efficient Homes.​

5. Think architect has Design-based ideas for building affordably.

6. Finder.com.au have the top 10 most helpful tips for building a house.​

7. NZI Architects expose 10 myths about architects.

8. Freshome.com has ten mistakes to avoid when building a new home, although I'm not sure about their advice to have as many windows as possible, and to think about skylights. I'm beginning to wonder whether I should have stuck at seven.

9.  LotNetwork.com has Ten green home building ideas, although they don't talk about the importance of insulation. Green may be more of a colour than a practical strategy to save the planet.​

10. And just in case​ you now need them​, here are ten tips on anger management from Mayo Clinic.

Too Much Humidity

When we built the house I refused to add an air conditioner for two reasons. First because I didn't think we needed to spend money on cooling when the house was not going to be so hot, and secondly because I'm from Yorkshire where we don't use air conditioners. Actually that's probably just one reason.

It may be global warming, acceptance of reality or weakness to luxury, but I think we need take active measures to remain comfortable in the peak summer heat. I need to take a closer look at passive house and high-temperature high-humidity in a different post.

The temperature is not a huge problem. It rarely goes over 28 degrees, and when it's 35 degrees outside, 28 degrees is a relatively pleasant temperature. The problem is when it is humid, and when it gets over 70% humidity it starts to feel really hot.

A de-humidfier would make the house more comfortable without making it cooler. In terms of thermal efficiency, de-humidification is a good idea since heat gain depends on temperature difference, so taking moisture out of the air makes it feel cooler without encouraging more heat to come in. On the other hand, making the house cooler means a bigger temperature difference, and more heat leaking in from outside.

Actually, we do have an air conditioner in one room, and that air conditioner does have a dehumidifier. But the de-humidify function just seems to work by cooling the air, and that room was not designed for the air to circulate through the rest of the house, so it just gets very cold in there when the dehumidifier is on.

Most dehumidifiers work by running air over a cooling element so that humidity condenses out of it. They differ depending on what happens to the heat that was taken away to cool the air. Either the heat can be put back into the air, or it can be taken out of the building. Our air conditioner does the latter, sending out cold, dry air. If you have a dehumidifer for a basement that gets damp in the winter, you want the former.

So do we want a dehumidifer that transfers the heat out of the house, or one that keeps it inside?

Should we try to dehumidify the air as it comes in through the ventilation system or should we get a standalone dehumdifier?

Would it just be cheaper and easier to get an air conditioner that can de-humidify?

Even if it was more expensive, would we be better off getting an air conditioner that can also cool and heat and do other fancy stuff? Maybe we could even get one that humidifies as well, since we need more moisture in the air in the winter.

Can I fit another air conditioner unit to the compressor that spends over 360 days of the year idle on my roof?

Or will it be cheaper to get another air conditioner with its own compressor?

How much moisture are we talking about?

The last question is easy.

If it's hot and humid outside, the ventilation system is going to be adding saturated air to the house. If it's 28 degrees, 60% humidity inside, with the ventilation system working at 150 cubic metres per hour, that is going to add 1.6 litres per hour. This is how much the dehumidifier needs to remove at peak load.

A closer look at some actual data for temperature and humidity here in July and August shows that the outside air was never actually hot and humid enough to come in saturated. But with a more comfortable 50% humidity at 28 degrees, the peak dehumidification load is 24 litres per day.

One very simple solution would be to switch off the ventilation system, or at least turn down the flow. This is a short term measure, because we do need fresh air in the house, but at night time and in the morning we open the windows and get plenty of fresh air in anyway. In fact the main demand for ventilation is to remove the moisture that we produce when we breath, wash and cook. If there are just a couple of people and a cat in the house, then we should be OK for a few hours. Turning down the ventilation would also be a good solution on cold winter nights when there is a risk of freezing in the drain from the ventilator.

References

Weather Data from Japan Meteorological Association (JMA) 

Vaisala Humidity Calculator 5.0

NOAA Heat Index Calculator

A great guide demystifying de​-humidifiers here. I particularly appreciate them explaining the history of the difference between UK and US pints.

Formulae for calculating absolute humidity from relative humidity and temperature

Workings:

Our house breathing in humid air:

​Assume on a hot day ​the air coming in is humid and hotter than the inside air, so humidity will rise to saturation as it passes through the heat exchanger in the ventilation. (Actually this is a pessimistic assumption.)
28 degree air at 100% humidity holds 27 grammes water per cubic metre.
Assume 60% humidity inside. That means an extra 11 g/m³.​
Air flow of 150 cubic metres per hour.
That's 1.6 kg of water per hour to get rid of.

Humans breathing out humid air:
In one hour we breathe in about 450 litres of air.
Assuming exhaled air is 100% humid at 36 degrees C; inhaled air is 60% at 28 degrees C.
1 cubic metre of exhaled air holds 42g of water vapour.
1 cubic metre of inhaled air holds 16g of water vapour.
We each contribute about 12 grammes of water per hour. Is that all?

What is Passive House? Probably not what you think

Here's my short answer:

Passive House is an excel spreadsheet.

There are loads of other definitions and mis-definitions out there. The term is frequently used loosely for any superinsulated building, and often mistakenly for passive solar buildings.

Passive House is not a way of using natural energy. It's true that Passive Houses will take natural energy into consideration, for example considering heat from the sun, but just pointing big windows south will not make a Passive House.

A Passive House is not a building without a heating system. Passive houses invariably have heating systems, but the amount of heating needed is very small. In fact the best definition of a Passive House is one where all heating and cooling needs can be met by heating or cooling the air coming in through the ventilation system.

There are many other things that Passive House is not, and in his excellent blog, Elrond Burrell gives a longer list.

My definition may put you off. I think excel spreadsheets put a lot of people off, including many architects. This is one barrier to the standard's popularity. If Passive House was a simple product you could buy to stick on your house, then lots of people would no doubt buy it. If it was a simple step you could add to the design process, designers would probably take it.

Passive house will help you to reduce your energy bill, and probably help reduce your environmental footprint. But if you want to save the planet, you need to do some sums. Laying a bit of turf on top will not make it green.

And now that we are firmly in the computer age, we can get a spreadsheet to do the sums for us. As with all good spreadsheets, you put various bits of information into the Passive House software, and you get out a simple and accurate picture of what is happening. In this case all the information going in relates to the building size, shape, location, materials and systems.

It is not difficult to find most of the information that you need to put in. But you do need to find it. You need to know the dimensions of the walls and the thicknesses and relative proportions of the various materials going into them.  The spreadsheet needs to know the insulation performance of each material, but most of them are already in there. You can also choose the hot water and ventilation systems, and their efficiencies. You need to know the size of the windows, and also their U values, and the psi values for the thermal bridges. The supplier of the windows should be able to supply these, and if not they may not be the right windows for a low-energy house. You need to know which direction each wall is pointing in. You need to know your local climate, or at least choose your location so that it finds your local climate.

The only piece of information you need to get up from your desk to find is the results of an airtightness test. If you're building an airtight house, then you probably should run an airtightness test anyway, and if you're building a house that is not airtight, start thinking about it.

​
W​hen​ all the information is in there, you know whether you have met the standard or not. More specifically it will tell you how much energy you need for heating over the year, how much total energy you need, and how often the house will go over 25 degrees centigrade. Even if you are not interested in meeting the standard, the software will give you a very accurate estimate of how much energy you are going to need to run your house.

Electricity demand in southern Europe to soar with air con

After the hurricane in Texas, there has been a lot of news about how the weather will affect energy use. Of course the big story is how energy use is already affecting weather! I'm sure I heard people twenty years ago warning about global warming making storms bigger and more frequent. 

Another angle is news from the Guardian here about the increase in electricity demand in southern Europe for air conditioning due to increased temperatures. The UK will probably also need more cooling, but will need less heating, so in terms of energy may break even. Obviously the increase in temperature depends partly on whether we do anything about carbon emissions, and of course there will be some feedback if Europe does not de-carbonise the electricity supply.

The article does mention increasing insulation as a way to maintain comfortable temperatures, which is good.

The picture accompanying this shows an array of air conditioners from four different manufacturers, all Japanese.

Here is a report on global demand from the Japan Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Industry Association which shows that demand for air conditioners is already increasing around the world. They estimate 2016 global demand to be around 100 million units, growing 2.9% from the previous year.

In terms of market size, China is the biggest with 40% share, followed by Rest of Asia, North America, Japan, Latin American and then Europe with 6 million unit sales. In terms of market growth there is a very different picture, with Europe growing at over 12%, followed closely by Latin America, then Rest of Asia growing at over 8%. The more mature air conditioner markets of North America and Japan show the lowest growth rates of 1.8% and 2.8% respectively.

Since they can work as heaters as well as coolers, and since they run off electricity which is the medium of choice for renewable energy, split-unit heat-pump-based air conditioners may increasingly become the unit of choice for domestic heating and cooling needs. I may even get one myself.

These solar panels... are they going to last?

Ugo Bardi writes about ​the energy return on photovoltaics. Citing an article from Bhandari et al. that looked at 231 studies on ​how much energy comes out of photovoltaics​, and how much energy went into producing them, he comes up with an average return of 11-12 for southern Europe. ​This sounds worthwhile.

(From Dale and Benson)

​This graph paints a slightly different picture. It plots the number of years it takes for panels to generate the energy it took to make them against the growth rate of solar production. The payback got at least three times better in ten years, and the growth also increased three times. This means that, so far, more energy has gone into making solar panels than has come out of them. Hopefully, the growth will stop at some point, and the line will swing into the green as panel production stops growing while the installed panels keep generating. That depends on economics. 

Older estimates were that panels would still generate 80% rated power after 20 years, but according to Engineering. com, panels produced after 2000 will still be producing over 90%, losing only half a percent per year. So technically the panels will still be generating.

Economics is about resources. Somewhere human time is factored into ​it. We consider this resource very precious. ​I remember large scale road building projects in the UK that would decimate forest, destroy habitat and create pollution ​just to take a couple of minutes off people's car journeys. There is an economic pressure to reduce the amount of human time needed for tasks.

Another view is that human time is infinite, and the natural resources are limited. The classical economic view looks at productivity and considers environment assets to be externalities and essentially deems them infinite.  

​Hopefully growth of solar panels will go down, and they will become net energy contributors, but there is a powerful economic mechanism supporting production. If growth increases and we start throwing away the old panels, then that line may stay permanently in the wrong part of the graph, and photovoltaics will have just helped in our longer mission of depleting the world's resources.

The only redeeming feature is that they work very well in space, so we can take them with us when leave the planet! 

​References:​

Bhandari, K. P.,  Collier, J. M., Ellingson, R. J. and Apul, D. S. (2015). Energy Payback Time (EPBT) and Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROI) of Solar Photovoltaic Systems: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews​,​ 47(July): 133–41. doi:10.1016/j.rser.2015.02.057.

Dale​, M. and Benson​, S. M., ​(2013​). ​Energy Balance of the Global Photovoltaic (PV) Industry - Is the PV Industry a Net Electricity Producer​? Environmental Science and Technology, 47(7), pp 3482–3489

​Green Rhino Energy looks more at the real cost of solar ​energy (warning: includes equations).