One characteristic of a super-efficient home is that it is dominated by people activities rather than climate. In central Illinois, and many other regions around the world, homes built with conventional construction techniques (for unexplained reasons, often called “green homes” in today’s marketing lingo) are dominated by the climate. That is, in a super efficient home such as Equinox House, less than 30% of its energy requirement is for managing the climate. In a modern home of conventional construction the house is dominated by climate. Insufficient insulation, poor quality construction, high infiltration rates, improper window design, inefficient comfort conditioning systems, and overall house design are primary reasons that modern, “good” construction practices cannot reach super performance levels.
When a house is designed and constructed to achieve super performance levels, the interaction of the people and appliances are critical to the comfort of the house occupants. During winter, your refrigerator, television, dishwasher, hair dryer, and almost any other thing you operate also help heat the house. In the summer, these items add to the air conditioning load. And, you are like a 100 watt light bulb because of your metabolism (by comparison, a modern Energy Star refrigerator is only 50 watts on average). Also, most anything related to your activities humidifies the house….your breathing, perspiration, washing, showering, cooking, combined with transpiration of any plants you maintain. All of these interactions, which individually are small, must be managed by intelligent house design (that is, material selections, ventilation system design, comfort conditioning system, etc).
Although appliance selections are very important, you do not have to sacrifice any appliances but you must choose those with high quality and performance. The kitchen in Equinox House contains the very best appliances. High performance laundry products, such as our Blomberg high spin speed washing machine and heat pump, ventless clothes dryer, reduce water and energy needs. The heat pump water heater (HPWH) developed by Newell Instruments, performs important house conditioning (cooling and dehumidification) functions in addition to heating water 2 to 3 times more efficiently than either gas or electric resistance water heaters.
Our Appliance Design magazine article from September 2010 describes appliance energy impacts on super efficient homes in more detail, including comparisons of some new technologies that are entering the market (heat pump water heaters and ventless heat pump dryers). For example, the HPWH and ventless heat pump clothes dryer used in Equinox House use 3000kWh of energy per year for a family of four. What can you do with 3000kWh? How about 9000 to 12,000 miles of electric vehicle driving at a solar powered cost that is less than $2 per gallon! Who needs oil?
Kitchen
Super-efficient, solar powered homes do not need to sacrifice in features or quality of living. Equinox House’s kitchen is composed of eco-modern, custom Italian cabinetry (Demode by Valcucine, designed by Pohlenz Cucine Moderne of Tulsa OK; ), architecture series KitchenAid appliances (22 cubic foot, cabinet depth French door refrigerator; double oven; touch sensitive cooktop; ventilation hood and microwave oven), and a Blomberg ultraquiet, high efficiency dishwasher. For more details, see the Cooking section.
Clothes Washing & Drying
Arcelik’s (pronounced ar-cha-lek) high performance laundry products (marketed under the Blomberg brand name in the US) are shown in the Equinox House laundry room. The washing machine features very high speed spin cycle (1200 rpm versus 800 to 1000rpm for typical US brands). Using a high efficiency, cold water detergent provides additional savings in hot water consumption without sacrificing quality of cleaning. The ventless, heat pump clothes dryer actually dries clothes, unlike many ventless dryers in the US that do not save energy nor effectively dry clothes. Elimination of the dryer vent saves another 25% of clothes dryer related energy usage due to house infiltration.
Water Heating & Comfort Conditioning
One of the side effects of having a purely electric house (no natural gas lines) is that electric resistance water heating and electric furnaces can be quite expensive to operate. To combat this, Newell Instruments has developed its own water heating and comfort conditioning systems which utilize heat pump technology (heat pumps tend to operate with 2-4 times the efficiency of electric resistance heaters). The benefits of avoiding natural gas are many. No indoor pollutants from gas combustion, no installation cost for natural gas service, piping and flues, no natural gas customer service fee (about $24 per month in our area), and no depletion of this unsustainable fossil fuel. Overall, eliminating natural gas saves at least $10,000 in cost while improving your home’s air quality and energy performance….a hat trick achieved by energy efficiency and renewable energy!
Read about our heat pump water heater here, and our comfort conditioning system here.
