[Greenbuilding] Aggressively Passive: Building Homes tothePassive House Standard

[Bob Waldrop]

OK, thanks for the clarification, it makes sense, now its more 
understandable.  No thanks on the larger house, the one I have is plenty big 
for the five of us.  Bigger houses mean bigger property taxes, and bigger 
energy bills, and MORE HOUSEKEEPING, as even if it were at the passive haus 
standard, we would have to pay for it, and my goal is to pay and use less, 
not more.  Plus bigger houses hold more stuff and that is always a 
temptation.

Sometimes I think we need a standard that no house can be called green if it 
is more than X sq ft/person typically habitating there.  Not sure where that 
limit should be drawn, except to say that our house is plenty big for usn's,

Bob Waldrop, OKC

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Straube" <jfstraube at gmail.com>
> No, Bob, PH is both smarter and dumber than that.
> The energy metric is based on source energy: that is energy that feeds an 
> electric plant, or the gas used to transport and compress natural gas.
> So if you house was all electric, it would be limited to 42 kWh/m2/yr 
> because the electricity grid in Germany requires 2.7 units of energy for 
> every unit of electricity (this is 3.35 in the United States, but the 
> PHIUS uses the ratio for the German power grid: no I am not making this 
> up).