The link video above is the first in a series of six that document an April 2010 talk by Peter Amerongen about how to build a Net Zero residential house, at the lowest possible cost, in a cold climate like Edmonton’s.

Peter is Edmonton’s foremost authority on energy efficient residential building, and his talk gives details about his experience as the project manager on Edmonton’s first three net zero houses. This stuff is pure gold.

All of the videos can be accessed right here on youtube.

(photo courtesy of Edmonton Real Estate Weekly)

I have the first set of electricity consumption numbers for the house (see the data at the bottom of the post). Some comments about the numbers:

• It was sunless winter. I found that sunshine had a greater effect on the performance of the house than temperature. People have commented that January was mild, but we burned a lot of wood because we only got 5-10 hours of total sunshine (92 hours is normal).
• Our heating needs dropped off a cliff once the sun started shining on a consistent basis. In the last six weeks all of the thermostats have been turned off, and we have only burned two fires.
• Of note: we installed water-efficient showerheads on January 12 (Bricor, 1.11 GPM versus about 2.25 GPM previously). Also, until January 12 there was another adult in the house (so  three adults, two children).

So far…

• That said, we went through a LOT of wood this winter. We would burn for four hours straight in the evening and then another hour in the morning when it was –25 and there was no sun.
• once the sun started shining, it warmed up, and we were using efficient shower heads, our electricity usage dropped to 8.6 kWh/day. We are very conscientious about power use, but on the other hand we cook a lot in the house.  These LAME numbers (lights, appliances and misc. electricity) are below our yearly estimate of 5150 kWh (8.6 kWh/day would be 3139 kWh annually).
• our movable PV awnings are not yet up. The production numbers are for 12 modules out of an eventual 32 (the last 20 are bifacial).
• the basement was not heated - it will be when someone moves in, plus they will be taking showers, etc.
• Based on what I seen, I think that this house will be net zero house at least in the above average years. It remains to be seen if it will make the grade for an average year.

The numbers:

Total: 2009 Nov 9 - 2010 Mar 22 (133 days)
-------------------------------------------
Total Household Use:   2451 kWh
Average Daily Household Use For Period: 18.4 kWh per day
Solar Energy Exported:   405 kWh
Solar Energy Used In-House:  223 kWh  read more... »

Saturday, March 20

• Seminar: 10am to 12:30pm
• Tours: 2pm to 4pm

Seminar: Designing and Owning a NetZero Energy Home

• Grant MacEwan University, CN Theatre Rm. 5-142, 105 St. Building at 105 St. and 105 Ave
• Peter Amerongen (builder), Gordon Howell, P.Eng. (solar engineer), Conrad Nobert (Mill Creek homeowner)
• Seminar and tours: No need to register. Cost: free

Open House Tours - see ideas you can use on your own house

• energy- and water-efficient construction and appliances reduce space heat by 65%, hot water by 75%, and
  electricity use by 50% for upgrade cost of less than $20,000. All electric. No need for natural gas line.
• air and water heat recovery, LED lighting, rainwater harvesting, passive solar, active solar, solar electricity
• sustainable materials, healthy indoor air quality, eco-landscaping, net zero emissions

Mill Creek NetZero Home, December 15, 2009, 14:00.

As we approach the winter solstice and the three-month anniversary of our moving in, we continue to learn about our new house. These observations are mostly qualitative, because we don’t have the rest of our solar modules up, and we haven’t set up monitoring equipment yet. We are tentatively planning to remove the door of our wood stove on July 1st, 2010  and then monitor the house’s energy use for a year.  read more... »

Mill Creek NetZero Home Heat Recovery Ventilator

I heard a story once about a man who built a house using insulated concrete forms (ICFs). While I don't advocate their use in general, ICFs have some distinct advantages (certainly over conventional construction). The primary of these advantages is supreme air tightness. ICF homes (those that are built with ICFs from top to bottom) can achieve hourly air change rates of 0.2. In contrast, the Mill Creek NetZero Home has an airtightness measurement of 0.36 ACH, which is really amazing for a wood-framed house.

So back to this guy who built the ICF house. He apparently wasn't aware of how air tight his house was, or at least the consequence of that air tightness. Six months after he moved in, he had to rip all of the drywall out because it had rotted. He had built a house as tight as a plastic bag, and forgotten a critical aspect: ventilation.  read more... »

You may have heard about Edmonton's next net-zero house, particularly if you're on Gordon Howell's mailing list. The Belgravia net-zero house is under construction, with demolition of the the previous house (built in 1948) on June 30.

Hi, my name is Bob Heath, and I'm the owner of the Belgravia NetZero (BNZ) house. I'd like to thank Conrad for allowing me to post to the Green Edmonton site. I'll be posting frequently over the next year about various aspects of the house, but I thought I'd devote my first post to how I came to make the decision to build a net-zero house.  read more... »

The lessons that I learned from the computer model of our solar hot water system are as follows:

• insulate the pipes leading from the basement to the collectors to at least R6, preferably R10
• insulate the storage tank to R50
• install a 1000 litre storage tank
• install 3 collectors
• there is extra heat - install a system to harvest it

We bought the collectors, drainback tank, pipe insulation and other knickknacks from Trimline Design Centre just down the road from the Mill Creek NetZero Home. My builder Peter was very impressed with the clever, simple design of the flat plat collectors that Trimline manufactures. Yes, that’s right, they manufacture solar hot water collectors right here in Edmonton!

Overview

(schematic of the MCNZH solar hot water system)  read more... »

(MCNZH concrete floor being bathed by sun through a 9’x6’ window)

The most important design considerations for cold climate building are insulation, building envelope, and passive solar design. Given our lofty goals for the Mill Creek NetZero Home (MCNZH), we pushed hard to maximize our return on every one of these fronts.

The MCNZH collects 54% of its annual space heat through passive solar design – that’s 8747 kWh or 31.5 Gigajoules. It does so by:

1. having huge south windows that are specially manufactured to maximize solar heat gain
2. containing a large amount of thermal mass to absorb the solar heat when the sun shines
3. having movable solar awnings that allow 100% of the sunlight to hit the windows during the heating season (the awnings are strictly speaking not a passive part of the solution).

I’ll discuss the first two bullets on this list, given that I’ve already described the movable awnings at length.  read more... »

We’re having an open house next Saturday. Please stop by if you like. We’ll have the main and second floor concrete floors poured by then, and we hope to have the wood stove installed too. I’d love to meet you if you’ve commented on the website before. Actually, I’d love to meet you regardless!

The idea is that you can see the two houses in different stages of construction. The Riverdale house is completely done. If you haven’t been down there yet I highly recommend it. My house uses many of the same techniques as the Riverdale house, and many of the construction details are still visible.

See the flyer attached to this post for more details. See you on the 14th!

I spent the afternoon putting pipe insulation on the hot water pipes in the Mill Creek NetZero Home (MCNZH). I can’t believe how cheap the insulation was – around $100 for the whole house. Its price and the ease with which it is installed make it a must, in my opinion, for those interested in energy efficiency. Anyone can install this stuff, and the insulation is so useful because it just sits and works, saving you energy every single day and never breaking.  read more... »