5(CRIN 1,619 ANNUAL ISSUE ON 

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• -44.95, Canada $5.95 

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42fAtie 

TAKING ISSUE 

'Spring 1901 fin. 6(1 

If it's not efficient, 

not !nautili'', 

I've long admi:ei the beauty and 

craftsmanship of the houses fealihed in Fine 

Homebuildinf But in many of them there's 

something missing—a dedicated effort to use 

energy and water efficiently. Are builders so 

preoccupied with cabinetry- and spiral ,..tairs. 

, that they don't keep up with new resource-

. saving meiods mat make houses more 

affordable, coaortable and earth-friendly? 

Take windows, for example. In 1983, our 

owner-built house/indoor farrireseaa-ch 

center at Rocky Mountain Institute in 

. SnownieFs, Colorado, was fitted with the best 

then available: argon-filled Heat Mirror 

glazing !double glazing plus a susaended 

low-emissivity-coated polyester (ilia) with a 

• center-of-glass insulating value of R-5.3. 

That's twicea efficient as the triple ?lazing 

featured in a 1990 Fine Ilomebuild;ag article 

on an "energy-efficient" house. Today the 

best mass-produced units are R-8.1. The best 

glazing on the market (from our 1933 

supplier—Alpen, Inc. in Boulder, Colorado) 

now exceeds R-10, four times as efficient as • 

aripk, glazing. Its two layers of Heat Mirror 

suspended between two panes of glass, with 

a lowee coating on one of the lights, kryptongas fill and optimal spacing of the panes. it 

looks like double glazing, but works about 

six times as well. 

According to Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory 

in virtually any U. S. climate an R-7 or better 

window gains more winter heat than it loses, 

even facing north. Our R-5.3 units.do that 

even in our mountain climate. No matter 

which way they face, therefore, super-efficient 

windows can compensate for other losses 

through a building's shell. For superinsulated 

houses, these losses can be so small as to 

render a furnace unnecessary. 

In our 8.700-degree-day climate, where 

' temperatures can drop to -47° F, our 4,000-sq. 

it. superinsulated house is more than 99% 

passive-solar heated. For backup and aesthetics 

we bum perhaps a half a cord of softwood a 

year in two small woodstoves. Our neighbors 

pay upwards of $1,000 a month to heat 

conventional houses the same size. 

To eliminate the need for a conventional 

treating system, we needed only R-40 walls, 

an R-60+ roof, our R-5.3 windows, tight 

construct:on, heat-recovery ventilation, good 

zone coupling (passive transfer of heat from 

warm to cold zones) and adequaterl ass. We 

didn't need rockbeds, higt an a s, or 

()tiler throwbacks to the early 1970s. This 

design also keeps us cool in the summer. 

Super-efficient lights and appliances cut 

our household electric use by about 90% to 

an average of just over 100 watts, costiag 

about $5 a month. This in !urn avoids the 

burning at power plants of the equivalent of 

the building's interior volume in coal every 20 

years. Tile result is less acid rain and 

red6ced global warming. 

Likewise, during its lifetime, each of our 

compact-fluorescent light bulbs adds allan less 

of carbon dioxide and 20 lb. less al sulfa 

oxides to the atmosphere than does an 

equivalent ncandescent bulb. These 

fluorescents last 13 times as long as 

incandescenta emit naturally colored light, 

don't flicker or hum, and save tens of dollars 

more than they east. That's not a hard choice. 

Adding up all these energy savings makes 

our house economically equivalent to a 

barrel-a-day oil well. Saved energy doesn't 

ponute., run out, aet cut off or hurt anyone. 

- The energy savings will more than pay for 

our entire building in 40-odd years—a small 

• fraction of its expected lifespan. 

What was the net extra cost of saviELL-nore; 

than 9991, of our space ano water-( eatit~ 

enner—►uo-M-solar heated arc1--- ..more than 

90% of our household electricItv? _usf$1 

per sq. TL, which was paid Jaas: 

rTorans. At that rite,Wirders who want a 

long waiting list might offer to pay their 

clients' utility bills for the first few years or to 

• pay any excess over, say, $100 a year. 

Ott, yes. That $1.50 per sq. ft. also includes 

cutting the house's water consumption by 

half, mainly via efficient toilets (ours use 0.8 

gal. to 1.1 gal. per flush), high-performance 

showerheads (1.2 gal. to 1.5 gal. per minute), 

faucet aerators and drip irrigation. 

The aesthetic qualities that gifted builders 

display in Fine llomebuilding are the same 

ones we seek here, but we get them:as an 

integral part of resource efficiency, not 

separately. Why do people seem to feel good 

in our house? Maybe it's the 95% natural 

lighting; the sight, smell, oxygen and ions 

(and sometimes nutrition—we harvested 

bananas at Christmas) supplied by the plants 

in our 900-sq. ft. semitropical attached 

greenhouse; the high radiant temperature and 

relatively low air temperature; the ample 

humidity and good air quality; the lack of 

mechanical noise and 60-Hz electromagnetic 

"smog" emanating from electrical devices; 

the sound of our greenhouse waterfall; and 

the ubiquitous curved walls that also enhance 

the building's strength and solar performance. 

Maybe it's the feeling, too, of not using things 

up, not stealing from our kids. 

Energy and water efficiency don't depend 

uch on a building's size or style, nor on 

climate. RMI has analyzed, for example, how 

to build at no extra cost an ordinary house in 

Las Vegas that consumes 90% less electricity 

and more than 50% less total energy than 

conventional houses do. We've also figured 

out how to shave 77% off the electric bill and 

more than 60% off the gas bill of a t;.pical 

house in Little Rock, Arkansas, with a payback 

of 11/4 years (three years for a retrofit). 

ctions have consequences. If your clients 

can't get affordable financing, maybe it's 

because our society spent $1 billion on a 

North Sea oil rig rather than $10 million on a 

superwindow coating machine with the same 

energy output. That's $990 million and a lot 

of precious oil lost because builders bought 

the wrong windows. Or maybe it's because 

we spent $1 billion on power plants instead 

of $10 million on a machine to make 

compact fluorescent lamps of equivalent 

energy value, all because builders bought the 

wrong lightbulbs. Did you? 

American houses in 1989 used about $40 

billion worth of oil and gas and $75 billion 

worth of electricity. That doesn't count the 

costs to the landscapes of Kentucky and 

Wyoming, to security and prosperity, to 

native peoples and wild creatures, to oceans 

and wilderness, to clean air and the earth's 

climate. How many of those costs have your 

name on them? How many can you eliminate 

by using resources more efficiently next time? 

Your skill and imagination, your dedication 

to building with elegant frugality, can truly 

help to save the world—one house at a time. 

—Amory Looins, Director of Research at 

Rocky Mountain Institute, SnourmaSs Cola 

81659-9199. RMI offers a free list of 

publications on energy and wale.- efficiency. 

4 Fine Homebuilding