Passive House, $250 Heating Bills, and Building Science Actually Works

It is time once again for the Wise Home Energy Show here on the WYSL stations.

And right here in the studio we have- Your energy. Yeah, that's it, Jeff Flaherty from Wise Home Energy. Your energy. Bob, thank you so much. I'm so glad you allowed me back into the studio. I allowed you in. I'm always shocked that' you let me back behind the microphone. Usually we, we, we check the silverware after you leave just to make sure that it's-

I don't- ... all still there. I don't blame you. I don't blame... It's conductive, and, you know, conductive is part of the energy. process, and so- Look at that. See what you did there? We're always- Very clever. We're always talking energy. So, uh, you know what? We're kind of getting out of, uh, the winter season, and, uh, uh, soon the home shows are coming up. So you'll see Wise Home Energy. in, in the Buffalo and Rochester home shows. So we'd love to have our listeners stop by, uh, and, and tell us they, they hear us on the show to give us any insight if we can improve anything, uh, on the show. We, we always want to, um, you know, hear from our, our listeners and our satisfied clients. So just wanna throw that out there. Stop by and see us. Oh, by the way, uh, if you're just discovering this show for the first time, which could be the case, because this is gonna be your first show on the big, new 27,000 watt signal, uh, and we are reaching out there towards Buffalo pretty far, and, uh, way down into the southern tier in northern Pennsylvania and as far as

Corning, the near reaches of Elmira. So if you're hearing us for the first time, b-by all means, let us know and call, uh, Jeff at

Wise Home Energy, and that phone. number is again? It's- 585-270-5836. Love to hear from you. Always love new listeners and, uh, so, uh, welcome aboard. Thank you. Uh, it's good. You. know, it's great to get that. far reach.

We've been excited to, you know, hear about WISL expanding out that reach. So, it's, uh, good to hear, and, that's the-- that's our, uh, service area. So, uh, what's not in our service area is Saratoga. Uh, just recently we' went to Saratoga for the

Clean Energy Conference and, uh, was doing a couple presentations up there. Uh, our general manager also did a presentation on indoor air quality. So, uh, not only do we fix houses locally here, but we try to spread the word on how to properly do that. And, um, one of the sessions that I did was, um, on, uh, why work fails. So some of the homes we go into, we see all the things we talk about on the show, uh, insulation and, uh, HVAC. And, we-- I really did a class on how these can be installed and not done right. And not only do they, fail, uh, so they were kind of a waste of money, they can make things worse. So that was, that was one session. It was, um, a great experience and well-attended. And another session

I did was, uh, how to treat Cape Cod. So we've certainly talked about Cape Cod-style houses on the show, and there's a few different ways you can treat them. And, uh, when I was creating the proposal or the presentation, I, I said, "I need to find out, uh, really in detail, uh, how to show the thermal conductive losses of these homes." Sounds kind of boring, but hey, don't we wanna know, if we're buying the best? Shouldn't we prove that we're getting the best? And so, uh, luckily, I have a local expert, uh, i-in our, area. We have a local expert in our area by the name of Matt Bowers. He's the director of, uh, building science at the Oros Group. And, uh, Matt worked up some detailed, uh, thermal conduction loss models, and I was able to really show the, the attendees how these different approaches work.

And, uh, the nice thing is we, uh, you' know, Matt, Matt ha-truly has a unique skill. So Matt built his home that has a leakage rate of 47 cubic foot per minute. So similar to what normally what we see, if we think in terms of milk, like many homes we see are like a gallon of milk, right? And Wise Home Energy is trying to get them down to maybe, uh, 8, 10, 12, 16 ounces. Matt, really, his leakage is like a shot glass. That's, that was how tight that home is. It's so, uh, incredible what he's done, and not only is it tight, but it performs. And so n-touting Matt's skill is, is one thing, but we're excited that Matt we have here in the studio. So I'm gonna probably let him, uh, you know, describe his bio better 'cause it's longer than I can ever, uh, you know, detail. But he's a certif-certified passive house designer, and he's also a naval nuclear engineer, so, uh- How cool is that? Those are two, uh, things that really stand out to me, but, uh- You can line your home with plutonium. Yes.

Without further ado, we have Matt Bowers. Thanks for joining us, Matt. Yeah, absolutely. How are you guys today? Oh, we're having fun. We're- Great. If I were any better, there'd be two of me. Wonderful. Wonderful. Well, Jeff, thanks so much for that introduction.

Um, yeah, so like Jeff said, I'm a certified passive house designer, and a lot of you out there might be wondering, "Well, what, what is a passive house?"

And, um, passive house isn't necessarily a prescriptive path, okay? Passive house is very much performance-based.

So when we're getting into passive house design, we wanna make sure that we have optimal levels of insulation.

We have, uh, adequate, optimized indoor air quality ventilation rates. We wanna make sure that there's no thermal bridges in the house, and we wanna make sure that it's super, super airtight.

Um, and all of this needs to be designed into the house. It doesn't just happen by accident, right? You-- I'm sure if you're driving down the road and you see a, a standard code-level built house going up, um, you know, it might look great and you might be looking at the overhangs and, and the front porches and things like that, um, but if you're a, a trained professional like Jeff or myself, when you're driving down the road and you see some of those things, you just start shaking your head. And, uh, you just kind of, you know, earmark that and say, "Well, I'll be getting a call from them in about three or four weeks after they move in."

That's right. So, um, yeah, there, there's a lot To passive house design. Um, but what we're targeting typically is the ability to heat your house with roughly a hairdryer's worth of energy.

Um, and so many times when we get into that low level of heating energy that's required for the house, um, we need to get a little bit more creative with what our heating and cooling solution is. Obviously, a, a forced air natural gas furnace is going to be a little bit too big, uh, for what we need. Um, so usually we're, we're, you know, uh, prescribing some sort of air source heat pump system.

You know, depending on the size of the house, we might look to geothermal, but for the most part, geothermal systems are gonna be too big, for a, a passive house as well.

Um, but we're designing in high levels of insulation. So for a standard code-built house today, we're probably looking at about s- a six-inch thick wall with cavity insulation. Um, if you get into maybe an Energy Star house or even if you're targeting, like, a net zero level performance house, um, you might get into maybe an R-Thirty wall, which would be a two-by-six wall with maybe an inch or two of, of continuous insulation on the outside. Um, but because passive house is performance-based, usually we're looking at around an R-Forty to an R-Sixty wall, which can be upwards of over a foot thick.

Um, and so that's being filled with insulation. And, and being a mechanical engineer, I know that moving things break, right? Mechanical pieces break, uh, and, and that's why there are a lot of mechanical engineers out there because we need to fix them.

Um, but insulation doesn't break. Uh, insulation and air tightness are typically a long-term solution, and if you're gonna build a new house that's gonna have a lifespan of fifty to a hundred years, um, you might as well do it right, right off of the bat.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So do you find, Matt, that, um... So, so does the process start with really people have this design in mind and say, "This is where I wanna go. I'm gonna call Matt and have him and his team design the house for me"? Yeah. That's a, that's a great question.

Um, you want to, you want to engage a passive house professional as early in the process as you can. Um, we can make just about any design a passive house design, but usually the first thing that we wanna do is some sort of design optimization.

Um, passive house was... I- is, is a rev- more or less a reverse engineered building.

Ho- And, and I say passive house, single family houses absolutely can be passive houses, but we can also look at passive house hospitals, and we can look at passive house car dealerships and passive house museums and, and schools and, and, you know, you name your usage type, uh, there's probably a passive house building of that sort throughout the world. Um, but it's really important to engage the passive house designer upfront just really because there are some things that we would like to do to the design to make it more efficient and then end up costing less in the long run to build.

Um, you know, simple shapes always make things easier from an insulation perspective, from a thermal bridge perspective, from an air tightness perspective, right? A square is probably the easiest form to, to make it work. That, not saying that you can't build a house the shape of a cross, just gonna make things a little bit more challenging for, for everybody.

And, you know, as much as we like our views, um, in the Finger Lakes here, there are very few views of the lake, right, that are to the south, right? So south, you know, we, we typically wanna design our, our buildings using some sort of passive solar techniques where we've got south-facing windows so that we can capture as much of that solar energy as we can.

Um, but I'm also a realist and understand that, that that isn't always possible. So there are certainly things that we wanna, you know, we wanna work through as a, as a design team to optimize your design. Nice.

So when, when we build a house like that, um, people would think... So 30 years ago, people tried to build these super insulated homes, and they found that they kinda rotted out and, and they had problems. What kind of, uh, techniques do you use to, to ward that off? Yeah. So I, I, I kind of started talking a little bit about the history of passive house. Why don't I start there? Um, so back in the '70s, we started seeing some super insulated houses, uh, in the US here, right? The oil embargo, energy was getting really expensive, um, and so people started super insulating their homes in an attempt to save energy and stay comfortable, right?

Um, because any house can be a net zero house if you just flip the breaker off and turn off the furnace, right? Right. But comfort, turns out, is, uh, is kind of important when it comes to, uh, your, your home as well. And so, um, what happened in the '90s was a German physicist decided to reverse engineer his building using some of the lessons learned from the, the homes, the super insulated homes here in the States, and, um, decided to optimize his, his building's ventilation rate, right? So we're gonna bring fresh air in from the outside, and we wanna find out what that optimal rate of, of fresh air is going to be, and that is now going to be the only

Uh, allowable heating source for the, for the house, okay? So a typical home is gonna require about 100 CFM of fresh air continuously bring, being brought into the house. And so that amount of air only has the capacity to hold so much heat.

So what we're gonna do is we're gonna take that 100 CFM, we're gonna heat it up to 120 degrees, and we're gonna distribute that throughout the house. Now we're getting outdoor air being brought in, but we only have a certain amount of energy. Now what we need to do is reverse engineer our building to meet that amount of heat, okay?

And so that kind of spawned into the, the whole passive house idea. Now, when we, um... How do I wanna say this? Uh, when we're designing our houses to make sure that they're not going to rot out from the inside, um, there, there are two aspects that we wanna pay really, really close attention to. The first is obviously indoor air quality. We wanna make sure that, um, the occupants are going to have the optimal indoor air quality, and indoor air quality is going to be bringing in fresh air from the outside. Uh, we also wanna make sure that we're exhausting all of the, the stale, stinky air from within the house to the outside.

And in our climate, what we really wanna focus on is, um, heat recovery of that air. So we're gonna bring the five-degree air in the winter in, and we're going to expel the 60 or 70-degree air from the house, and we're gonna recover maybe about 85% of that heat, uh, and

60 to 70% of the humidity, because dry air is also really, really critical to pay attention to. Um, so we're gonna first make sure that there's optimal indoor air quality, and then we also wanna make sure that there are no cold spots within the house that are going to result in condensation and mold and mildew growth, okay?

So we certainly wanna, um, you know, eliminate when that, that's, those are results of thermal bridges, so there's no cold spots in the house. And we also wanna build with, uh, good materials, right? And, and the best analogy, uh, that I've heard on this is, um, if your pet uses the litter box, right, um, it's gonna smell in the house. Yeah. You don't open up the windows to get the smell out, right? You remove the smell. Yeah. So building with good materials that give off low VOCs, that are healthy materials to be, to be breathing are where we wanna start. We don't wanna use, maybe they're in- more inexpensive materials, um, and then have to f- be forced to use more ventilation than, than is required. Excellent. Excellent.

So, um, so just taking a break there, uh, we are speaking with Matt Bowers, director of building science with the, uh, Auros Group. Do you wanna give your contact information if anybody wants to get ahold of you to discuss, uh, in more detail passive houses? Yeah, sure, sure. So, uh, my email address is matthew.bowers, B-O-W-E-R-S,

@aurosgroup.com, and that is spelled A-U-R-O-S-G-R-O-U-P. Um, the Auros Group is, uh, located in Pittsburgh. Obviously, I'm working remotely here in Rochester.

Um, and my phone number, if anybody wants to reach out to me, is area code 585-750-8192. Uh, we do focus on, uh, single-family passive house designs. We focus on commercial buildings, commercial deep energy retrofits, um, you know, uh, really any kind of usage type of building, uh, is something that we've got experience in one way or the other. Excellent. Excellent. So, uh, again, this is Jeff Flaherty with Wise Home

Energy, 585-270-5836. It's the Wise Home Energy Show. That's right. So we, uh, it's interesting, we, we s- specialize in, in retrofitting older homes, and, and sometimes we get calls, uh, that our people are looking for something, uh, much more in that design of the, the passive house. So we, we just refer them off to

Matt and, uh, feel confident and know that we put them in, uh, put them on the path to the right direction and, uh, it's pretty neat. So there's always a different niche, right? There's a, there's a different, um, uh, you know, not, no, no menu is perfect for everybody. So, uh, when, when somebody wants that high-end design, uh, Matt's the person to call. And so Matt, um, on the, on the, the passive house design, when you, you described a little bit of the heating and cooling and the fresh air, do-- Once you build this home, is there moisture considerations in the home? Do you have to dehumidify, and do you s- decide before or after the home is built? That's, that's a great question.

Um, so there's a special modeling software that we use called the Passive House Planning Package, and what we do is we model the whole house. Uh, we model the R values of all the walls, the U values of all the windows, um, the orientation, the climate data, the heating and cooling system efficiency, the ventilation flow rates, all of those things. And the outputs of that are going to tell us things such as, um, what's gonna be the average humidity inside the house over the course of a month or over the course of a year. So, uh, once we've modeled the house, maybe as designed, we can come up with some suggestions as to the, the things that we see as the outputs of the model that we can, uh, further, uh, optimize, okay? Maybe that's making the windows slightly bigger. Maybe that's rotating the house 10 degrees. Maybe that's increasing the ventilation rate or decreasing the ventilation rate slightly to, just to make sure that we're tuned in with, um, maintaining the, the optimal, uh, comfort level within the house.

And I, I'm, I, I've used the word comfort now a couple times. Um, comfort is more than temperature. Usually that's, that's what people are, are looking for, right? Is they just want the right temperature in their house. That's, that's, like, the baseline. Um, but passive house is more than that level of comfort.

It's, uh... We wanna maintain optimal humidity levels inside the house because, uh, viruses and, and things like that, as we've learned throughout the, the pandemic here, um, can, uh, are, are h- struggle to survive in the humidity levels that we actually find the most comfortable, right? Between 40% and 60%.

So we wanna maintain the house not only at 68 degrees, but we wanna maintain the humidity level at the right level. Uh, we also aren't gonna have any cold surfaces in the house. So all of the surfaces within a passive house are within six degrees of each other, so you don't get cold drafts. You don't feel cold when you're sitting next to a window.

Um, and another aspect of comfort that a lot of people tend to ignore until it becomes an issue is noise. Okay, maybe you live next to a hospital, right? And you hear the, the sirens coming in and out of, uh, you know, or, or near a, a fire station. Or maybe you've just got noisy neighbors who have lots of dogs, right? Um, within a passive house, because it's so insulated and airtight, you don't hear those noises outside of the house, okay? Um, and so the, the noise level within a passive house also plays into the whole comfort aspect of, of being within a, a high-performance passive house. Very nice. Very nice.

So everybody always wants to know what carrots exist. So besides from the, uh, low operating cost, is the, does the government give any tax credits to build a home like this?

Um, so tax credits come and go. Mm. Um, and so, um, first, let's, let's talk about the low operating cost. You, you just, you b- just mentioned that. So the house that I live in is roughly 2,800 square feet. It's in Honeyoye Falls.

Um, and I, I've given tours of it and, and everything else. Um, I've got five kids and a wife and, uh, and myself, and I, I work out of the home.

Um, and our annual heating bill, and it's, it's all electric, right? And we're not, we don't have geothermal or anything else.

Our annual heating bill is about $250. Um- What? Yeah. That's great. Astonishing. So, so- That's my monthly bill.

Yeah. Ex- and, and so that, I mean, now, now I did say that that is my heating bill. Yeah. Um, my overall energy bill is with the, is right around $1,000 a year. Uh, and that's inclusive of, of everything that we're using, from hot water to air conditioning to, um, heating and cooling. So that's, that's the level that we're talking about in terms of, of energy efficiency.

Now, there are tax credits. There's a, there's a 45L tax credit out there for, for new builds, but the performance to get to that tax credit level is only, and I say only, it's, it's still a stretch for a lot of builders, um, is ENERGY

STAR certification. Right. Okay? Um, and there are a lot of incentives out there on the carbon markets and in the, um, you know, in the commercial tax credit and tax deduction realm that are out there to do high, you know, buildings that are higher performing than, uh, than your standard LEED building.

Okay. And now on the multifamily, do they have any, uh, programs for that? It seems I see a lot of multifamily trying to go this route. Yeah. Multifamily is really the sweet spot for passive house because as the buildings get bigger, you actually need less insulation. So as we're talking about maybe a 16-inch thick wall for a single family house, a multifamily building, a 40-unit, 50-unit building, might only need the R-30 wall, okay? And there's certainly, uh, there's certainly an energy savings, um, from the tenants and, and, and everything else. Now, the, the tax credits are similar, but there are some larger tax credits out there, um, and, uh, and other incentives for, for larger multifamily buildings, for sure. Excellent. Excellent.

Um, so Matt, we're kinda getting close to the end, if you wanna give your contact information again. Yeah, sure. So, uh, again, my name is Matt Bowers. I'm the director of building science at The Auros Group.

Uh, my phone number is 585-750-8192. If you have any questions, uh, about passive house or maybe you're thinking about designing a new house, feel free to reach out to me. Uh, you can also reach me at my email address, which is, uh, matthew, M-A-T-T-H-E-W, .bowers, B-O-W-E-R-S,

@aurosgroup.com, uh, A-U-R-O-S Group. O- Okay, I got a question. Sure. Well, actually, I got a lot of questions. We only got four minutes left in the program, though. But the first one is, how come I have never heard of this concept before? I mean, uh, I, I'm attuned to the media. We're in the media business, and th- this is revolutionary, startling news. A, a, an annual heating bill of $250.

Yeah. Um, it's, it's doable. There, it's... The, the passive house movement, I guess I would call it, is very much a grassroots movement. Um, and different designers and architects and, and engineers, uh, you know, will, will get together and, uh, talk about projects that we're currently working on. But it hasn't reached, I would say, mainstream because there's a lot of resistance from, uh- The, the building community to change things up, and the demand just hasn't been there for the training that's been required. But why would that be? I mean, the, the, the, the pass- the, uh, I'm sorry, passive house, right? Passive house. A passive house still needs to be built.

Yep. So building trades are still required. So what difference does it make to them if they build a passive house or, uh, you know, the usual stick build? They, they don't know how to sell it. They don't know the benefits of it, and people aren't asking for it because they don't know about it either. So it's more, it's more or less one of the w- you know, chicken or the egg, what's gonna come first here? Are the, are the builders gonna know how to build it and try to sell it, or are the people gonna be asking for it and the builders are gonna try to figure out how to put them together? Yeah. Yeah, it's really neat. And, and Matt used to, uh, you know, years ago, after he built his home, he would give tours. And, uh, so it, it's... I toured the house and n- n- and met Matt a few years later, so

Yeah. Uh, it wa- it's really neat to see, uh, how it performs and, and just all the benefits. Everything's been thought about of, of those different critical areas of durability, sustainability, comfort, health and safety, and energy usage. It, it's all comes together. But it's a thought out process. It's a plan. Uh, similar to when we're retrofitting a home, uh, it's tough to fix it after it's done. So you wanna really think about it beforehand, make the plan, and, and, and go forward and do it right. So like I said before, we'll be at the home shows, um, in Buffalo and Rochester, so if you wanna stop by or, uh, drop a, drop a line to us when we're there, and, uh, we'll get you in contact with Matt if, uh, you're looking for, for, you know, making the best house you can make if you're in the, in the design, uh, build stage, so. Um, and then

Wise Home Energy, uh, we are doing the retrofits, and, uh, it's amazing the reviews that we've gotten recently on, on Google. It is just, uh, it's so rewarding that the team is committed to, to getting out there and all parts of the team.

Uh, there are a lot of moving parts, and, uh, everybody's committed to, to really rocking it out. And, and what I learned at the conference in Saratoga, when I said the size of the equipment we were putting in, it was sounded like a mutiny. People said I was gonna, you know, freeze people, and I just said, "Well, the data's there. I don't get the calls." I, I'm probably... If they make smaller equipment, I'd probably still put it in, so Right. Proof of the pudding and all that. Uh, well, Matt, thanks so much for stopping by.

Fascinating. And, uh, you should, uh, uh, if you just tuned in late, catch this podcast at wysl1040.com. You wanna hear this. You've been listening to the Wise Home Energy Show, always informative, always entertaining, and sometimes, like today, amazing. Amazing. Amazing. Thank you. Jeff Flaherty, give them your, uh, contact number one more time. 585-270-5836. Stay warm and comfy. See you next time on Wise Home Energy.