{"id":5988,"date":"2009-01-02T10:18:45","date_gmt":"2009-01-02T17:38:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=5988"},"modified":"2009-01-02T10:18:45","modified_gmt":"2009-01-02T17:38:33","slug":"passive-houses-heating-without-furnaces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=5988","title":{"rendered":""Passive Houses" — Heating without furnaces"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hey, what if you could have a house that’s much friendlier to the environment and costs about a tenth as much to heat? Passive houses are here<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Even on the coldest nights in central Germany, Mr. Kaufmann\u2019s new \u201cpassive house\u201d and others of this design get all the heat and hot water they need from the amount of energy that would be needed to run a hair dryer. […]<\/p>\n

Using ultrathick insulation and complex doors and windows, the architect engineers a home encased in an airtight shell, so that barely any heat escapes and barely any cold seeps in. That means a passive house can be warmed not only by the sun, but also by the heat from appliances and even from occupants\u2019 bodies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The concept has been tried before, but failed because of problems with mold and stale air. A new air circulating system, in which cold air gong in is heated by the warm air going out, has solved this problem.<\/p>\n

But the sophisticated windows and heat-exchange ventilation systems needed to make passive houses work properly are not readily available in the United States. So the construction of passive houses in the United States, at least initially, is likely to entail a higher price differential.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the kinds of home construction popular in the United States are more difficult to adapt to the standard: residential buildings tend not to have built-in ventilation systems of any kind, and sliding windows are hard to seal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sounds like the sort of thing that some sort of big green infrastructure investment stimulus package might want to invest in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hey, what if you could have a house that’s much friendlier to the environment and costs about a tenth as much to heat? Passive houses are here: Even on the coldest nights in central Germany, Mr. Kaufmann\u2019s new \u201cpassive house\u201d … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environmental-issues","category-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5988\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}