[Revi]

It looks like that energy constrained future may start as soon as next year and the year after. The projections are that Bakken will peak and start to diminish some time around 2015-2016. If it does peak and tank, so will world oil production. Of course there is still Eagle Ford and Marcellus, but world oil production without our Fracked oil peaked in 2011. We are floating on a thin veneer of oil, and that may prove to be short lived.

I know people have been calling the timing of the peak and downslope for a long time, but this time it may be for real.

Maybe...

[KaiserJeep]

Kaiser, are your aware of the simple fact, that the german passivehaus is basically the posterchild of hitech contraption, not that desirable for the longterm, perhaps even midterm outlook we face. Well, you can replace the oem air recuperation unit by diy version of lower efficiency, but you certainly can't locally replace the little computers and sensors, tiny electric motors and pumps, double-triple glazed gas filled windows, and most importantely all these vapour barrier fabrics around, bellow and on top of the house..

Certainly you can bet on the rosy future scenario that no repairs or damage will occur in say next 2-4decades, and or that some pocket of industrial countries overseas will still be able to produce these spare/replacement materials and ship them safely into your place somewhere in the heartland if necessary.

It's up to you, I'd not go that route, unless being very rich, i.e. "always" able to relocate and buy new properties willy nilly.

Sorry, there is no free lunch, that's not how this universe works, and the human society due to its short attention span can only provide illusions about that.

FYI, the Passive House standard requires:

Energy consumption for heating/cooling below 4746 BTU per square foot per year.

Total energy consumption for all heating, hot water, and electricity below 37900 BTU per square foot per year.

Air leakage that is less than 0.6 times the total house volume per hour, measured in a Blower Door Test at 50 Pascals air pressure.

There are no requirements for thermostats, pumps, computers, sensors, the heat recovery ventilation you discussed, or indeed even electricity. You can achieve the standard via high tech or low tech means and I am not surprised that the Germans went high tech. BTW, every major window supplier in the USA is offering triple-glazed windows at this time, it is no longer necessary to import such windows.

What Passive House really is, is a standard and construction techniques aimed at a goal of a healthy house without drafts or other discomforts, that can be constructed for roughly a 5-10% premium over a similar sized new structure that complies with current local building codes and note such brand new structures typically use 10X or more the energy of a Passive House. There are about two dozen certified Passive Houses in the USA, with another few dozen under construction.

Almost all contractors are not trained or certified to build such structures, and in entirely typical behavior, they are criticizing things they know little about - like whomever filled your head with twaddle on this topic. Or perhaps you heard about all the early Passive Homes built 10 years or more ago in Europe, before appropriate design goals existed. Many such homes are indeed uncomfortable just as you described, but NOT those being built today.

My intent, by the way, is actually to build an "Energy Plus" home, completely off the grid, that generates enough of an energy surplus to run an electric vehicle level 2 fast charger. The super-insulated shell will be so effective as to not require any form of furnace, and the body heat from two people plus waste heat from cooking and lighting will keep it comfortable all Winter - and the windows can be opened in Summer, which is not so extreme in Wisconsin right next to Lake Michigan anyways. Nor has anyone I know of ever had a well go dry that is only about a hundred feet or less from a Great Lake, full of fresh water.

YES, I fully understand that the embodied energy in such a home will be enormous. I will use recycled materials as long as their use will not compromise performance, but I believe that fairly soon after the crash, the construction of new Passive Homes, or the retrofit of existing structures, will become unaffordable to someone with a Middle Class income.

Ask yourself what YOU will be doing when the cost of heating and cooling a home is tenfold what it is today. I myself will be living in a comfortable home with functional automatic heat and cooling. Most other people will be skulking through public lands, stealing firewood, and living all Winter with their entire family in a single room. If you ever paid more than $200/month to heat the home you are in, you are not living in a place that anybody with a Middle Class income can afford to heat after oil, gas, and coal get expensive.

Tech does not frighten me, by the way, my profession is Electrical Engineering, and I believe I can keep the house running and expect to modify any systems that need modification if original parts cannot be acquired, with my tools in a workshop in the barn/garage. I believe that as long as I have the means to build such a Passive House structure, it would be extremely foolish to have any other goal. After all, money in the bank will become worthless almost overnight, spend it while you have it.

Recently we had a thread about an Earth-sheltered home built by member MonteQuest. He has a plan to keep warm, and so do I. You can either make a plan to keep warm in a way you can afford, or go South for the Winter. If you think you can sit in place until the "government" rescues you, well good luck with that.

I understand TANSTAAFL means. Yet I choose to build a new home in an area where real estate values are still declining, and I can buy a not-so-old equivalent sized existing home for about half what it costs to build. I believe that many such conventional structures - even including brand new homes built to existing obsolete building codes - will be abandoned by those who can no longer afford to heat them, and that these homes and their contents will end up being burned by others for fuel.

[Revi]

Here's where my guess that the Bakken is going to peak next year came from:

http://peakoil.com/production/bakken-ti ... -forecasts

[Tanada]

Here's where my guess that the Bakken is going to peak next year came from:

http://peakoil.com/production/bakken-ti ... -forecasts

If prices stay low on the international market you will win that bet. I think we will see a dearth of new drilling beyond the minimum needed to keep leasing rights active.

Does anyone have a graph handy of what last winters weather pattern did to drilling and completion rates? This year is shaping up to follow the same pattern so if this years rates are substantially lower than last we might attribute that to price pressure.

[KaiserJeep]

KJ, I see no mention of heat recovery ventilation, the intricacies of balancing heat, CO2/O2, and especially humidity in a closed environment. This from the New York Times 2013/08/15

To make things more complicated, no two passive houses are likely to be built to exactly the same specifications. Thousands of variables, including the architectural design, the size of the house, how many people will live there, and longitude and latitude, are taken into consideration by the sophisticated software created by Dr. Feist and his Passivhaus Institute in Darmstadt, Germany.

The first time Mr. Freas’s design team tried the computer modeling, it took them 100 hours. Now they have it down to 6.

Early super-insulated houses failed specifically because of humidity and mold issues. Here is the Pacific Northwest we are well aware of the damage to construction and health that condensation and mold can have on a home. Our solution is to leave windows and doors open on a regular basis, but then we do not have the wild swings of temperature as other places.

How is air/heat exchange handled to account for changes in season, , solar insolation and shading by tree growth, parties, excessive rain/humidity, long personal absence? This sounds like a complex system, that as noted by others would be prone to glitches, software bugs, sensor issues, etc.

It seems to me that extra money in super insulation/air-exchange might be better spent on a wood stove and wood lot. Ten acres of hardwood in the upper Midwest would provide a sustainable carbon-neutral solution to heat. Passive design with shading and a ground source heat pump for cooling?

You see no mention where - in the standard? Heat recovery ventilation (HRV) is not required, it is a technique used to achieve the energy goals. The standard only specifies a level of energy performance, and the means to test the structure to find out if the performance goals have been met. You also must meet all applicable local building codes, and there ARE places in the USA where the codes require HRV.

YES there have been failures and partial failures of Passive Homes, due to design defects, construction defects, material defects, or even damage caused by homeowners who pierce vapor barriers hanging pictures on exterior walls. As already noted, if you pierce the vapor control barrier or the exterior water control barrier, or leave a void in the insulation, you can get mold, or even bizarre things like carpenter ants that can burrow into EPS (expanded polystyrene) SIPs (structural insulated panels) where moisture has invaded the foam insulation.

Just as you can have all of these same failures mentioned in conventional home construction. A Passive House after all is not unique in anything except the Energy Usage goal for the structure - which is a moving target because building codes for new structures change all the time in all different ways in all the various areas. Some Passive Houses - and even larger structures like hotels or public buildings - have been built in compliance to both the PH standards and the most restrictive building codes in existence in the USA. Other Passive Houses have been built in areas where there are no building codes, no inspections, and no permits needed. Many of the "Earthships" discussed in earlier threads might meet the PH certification, but my wife would not live in a structure that looks like one of those designs. MonteQuest's modest home documented in the thread "MonteQuest's Earth Sheltered Home" may or may not be in compliance with the PH standard, for example, but I doubt if he will even bother with testing for compliance to the standard, because the consultation fee and the test add about $1500 (or more) cost.

What I need in addition to the energy goal is a house with a more conventional appearance, that will house all my wife's clothing and shoes, her Nantucket Lightship Basket collection, her Grandmother's antique furniture, and her roughly 120' of cookbooks alone, not to mention another 200' of assorted books from both of us: IOW, a room full of bookshelves, a library. We also need storage for her extensive collection of Chrismas decorations. We have decided on a home of roughly 2000 square feet, for the two of us, plus occasional guests. Current thinking is three bedroom, three bathroom, with an open floorplan in the public spaces. We want a complete basement for a mechanical room, laundry, and extra pantry space. We need a detached 3-car garage with a workshop space and an insulated second floor with a bathroom, that will initially be built out as a woodworking shop for me, and later finished out as a 1-bedroom, 1-bath apartment for a healthcare provider for the elderly, because this is our retirement home.

Of course, MonteQuest is a contractor, and I am not. Therefore I am planning for success by planning to hire a local Architect who is experienced in PH design and has one or more certified residential homes to show me, along with the proper test results. I will also be shopping for an experienced contractor who also has PH experience and successful PH structures in his resume, in the local area. Also I am planning for a relatively short construction cycle, since some PH residences have taken 2-3 years - or even longer - to complete.

The means to achieve the last goal are to select a construction method (classic timber frame, aka post & beam construction) and a super-insulation method (SIPs) that are supplied by a manufacturer who has supplied a prefabricated house "kit" that has met the PH certification hurdle at least once. The site will be prepared with super-insulated and thermal-bridge-free concrete foundation, then the manufacturer's crew will erect the timber frame and hang the SIPs in approximately one week, using a crane and a trained and experienced "timberwright" crew for assembly. Then the most time consuming portion of the construction begins with plumbing, electrical, roofing, window and door installs, interior partitions, finish carpentry, appliance installs, etc. etc. PH residences are now being built in less than 12 months using timber frames and SIPs, from initial plans to occupancy. The last phase of construction, both in duration and cost, is similar or even identical to a conventional home.

The final parts of construction such as the woodworking shop layout and the construction of built-ins for the living spaces will be done by me, after we have the occupancy permit. The plan is to do everything that must be done, then move in, and then spend a few years getting comfortable and familiar with what will indeed be a unique, one-of-a-kind structure.

It seems to me that having any other goal other than a certified PH structure - which uses HALF the energy of a structure built to the most stringent building codes in the USA, and 10% the energy of a typical new structure in the USA, for a price penalty of 5-10%, would be wrong. Especially in the Northern climate zone where conventional housing will be extremely hard to heat. I'll also have secondary goals such as a near maintenance free design (fiber cement siding and exterior trim, etc.) and "Universal Design" - a home that is suitable for wheelchair use, and can accommodate a bedridden individual who wants to die at home, with a resident care provider. Not to mention the most important requirement of all, zero mortgage and no other debts of any kind.

Were I even 40 years old, I might buy a conventional home and 10 acres of trees. But I am presently 63 and will probably be 65 before we move into our home. I am planning realistically for a home that an elderly couple on a fixed income can afford to own and heat and keep in repair. One that my wife will accept because it has a traditional appearance and holds all her lifetime of accumulated possessions.

I am fortunate to have the choices I have, because I live in one of the very few spots in the USA where Real Estate is still appreciating rapidly. I am retiring May 31st after having paid off my mortgage in February. Then I need to stage my present home for sale. Meanwhile we are visiting Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota between Thanksgiving and Christmas, because I want to remind my wife, who was born in Nantucket but has lived in California since 1986, what Winter feels like. She might after all, decide to move South instead of North.

But I kinda doubt it: my daughter is pregnant with twins, labor will be induced in early June at eight and a half months. I am betting that Grandma-to-be will want to be nearby, but not too near, to Madison, WI.

[vtsnowedin]

KJ:

If you have a reader in the family as you do it is easier to compute the books by the cord (128 cu. ft,) The little paperbacks take up a lot less space and weigh less then the hard copy first editions. If you have to burn them for heat in an emergency the oversize coffee table books return the best heat per volume.

[vtsnowedin]

KJ wrote:

What I need in addition to the energy goal is a house with a more conventional appearance, that will house all my wife's clothing and shoes, her Nantucket Lightship Basket collection, her Grandmother's antique furniture, and her roughly 120' of cookbooks alone, not to mention another 200' of assorted books from both of us: IOW, a room full of bookshelves, a library. We also need storage for her extensive collection of Chrismas decorations. We have decided on a home of roughly 2000 square feet, for the two of us, plus occasional guests. Current thinking is three bedroom, three bathroom, with an open floorplan in the public spaces. We want a complete basement for a mechanical room, laundry, and extra pantry space. We need a detached 3-car garage with a workshop space and an insulated second floor with a bathroom, that will initially be built out as a woodworking shop for me, and later finished out as a 1-bedroom, 1-bath apartment for a healthcare provider for the elderly, because this is our retirement home.

That is a lot of house for just two people. A lot to keep clean and to take care of.
My own house which I built myself has a full basement of 975 sf. a first floor of 975sf. and a second floor of 1000 sf which includes four bedrooms and two full baths. When we built it we had three children from seven to one years of age. They are all grown and gone now. The house is now huge and packed in places with stuff they have brought back from college apartments etc. and left here "until they decide what to do with them". We are not actually using more then about 1000 sf. I needed the space when I built it and it has served us well but I would not rebuild that today with just the two of us an an occasional visitor.
To each his own however. Good luck with your project.

[KaiserJeep]

So KJ, how does the house deal with respiration, CO2/O2 exchange, and humidity transport? I saw no answer to my concern. I see nothing in your response in that regard.

There are NO DIFFERENCES between a Passive House and a conventional home in such matters. If you are fond of long steamy showers or are boiling a large pot of water for pasta or lobster feast, there will indeed be excess humidity present. In the Spring/Summer/Fall you crack open a window or two and cross ventilate. In Winter, you use the HRV system and the condensate goes into your graywater system.

One actual difference between a conventional home which may have R-20 in the walls and R-40 in the roof, and a passive home which may have R-80 walls and R-100 roof is that the walls and ceiling do not feel cold, and triple glazed windows with thermal barrier frames do not feel cold and water does not condense nearly as much as in conventional structures, even in mid-Winter. One obvious point where condensation occurs is the HRV system, the air-to-air heat exchanger. Premium ones are made of high grades of stainless steel and can be easily cleaned in place. Cheaper units can corrode.

You can set the HRV system for the number of air exchanges per day that feels comfortable, and alter the setting if need be, because of guests or cooking. Or you can let a computer manage your home, and alter the settings automatically. Both manual and automatic modes are possible. For example, say you have 10 windows in your South-facing (passive solar) facade. You could open/close 10 sets of draperies each morning and night on a schedule, or set the program and allow verbal (or wifi device) overrides, after installing off-the-shelf drapery motors. The cost difference is 10 sets of drapery motors, which probably cost less than the insulated draperies themselves.

I will in fact probably use some off-the-shelf home automation products and software, including thermostats and drapery motors and HRV controls and the like. I will certainly have the usual assortment of carbon monoxide and smoke detectors.

The bottom line is modern PH construction will minimize such problems in comparison to conventional designs. But make no mistake, modern houses are already troubled by such problems.

My goal is to have two monthly bills related to the house: trash pickup and the satellite uplink/downlink that provides off-the-grid video, internet, and VOIP telephone service. Electricity, water, sewage treatment, garbage composting, and space heating/cooling are all on-site. Taxes are of course inescapable, as are things such as Medicare insurance bills.

The Passive House also makes such things as an "all-electric" home possible and practical, because of the 90% reduction in energy required. For example, I mentioned I don't need a furnace. Most PH designs use a "Ductless Mini-split" heat pump in each zone for heating/cooling. Some homes use a groundwater source heat pump and multiple zones. I will leave such details to the professionals, I will simply ensure that "creeping elegance" does not take hold, by enforcing the KISS principle (Keep It Simple Stupid) and by ensuring there is a manual fallback mode.

I am after all, an Engineer. If mistakes are made, I will deal with them, and alter the structure or mechanical systems as needed. Meanwhile if such topics interest you, there is a wealth of stuff on the Web.

[Mesuge]

It's just another sad story of a day dreamer who thinks he even needs to transfer/fill new "end of BAU times" house full of junk again. Magic house which is indeed hitec in function but on the other hand not at all. Or to put it more politely KJ has not apparently even fully entered the bargaining stage (3) on Kübler-Ross scale, it's a long way to..

[KaiserJeep]

So if any of YOU have an answer for when say a tenfold cost increase for energy has occurred, then lay it out. I have one, and I'm prepared to implement and tweak it to near perfection.

Keep in mind that I AM NOT a believer in the fall of civilization. Knowledge is never lost, and civilization does not regress. Many of you carry around smartphones and tablets, each comprises more computing power than existed when I was born. A sub-$100 tablet is a powerful, versatile computer. It is capable of acting as a wifi-connected, whole house remote, and such applications have gone through multiple versions.

If you are criticizing my choices, then think of your own. Think of harvesting wood for cooking and space heat, without chainsaws, log splitters other than a simple wedge, or gasoline powered trucks. Think about carrying wood, and then hauling wood ashes, and dealing with them. I have lived in both wood heated homes, and those with furnaces, and would not wish to rely on wood. I remember the misery when my GrandMother had to fire up her woodstove in the midst of a humid Arkansas Summer. I remember some of their elderly neighbors who perished because they became too feeble to survive in a backcountry environment, and had no local relatives.

I expect to have to continuously tweak and revise hardware and software. I have had to watch generations of my computer designs go obsolete. Change is a technological constant. You either keep up, or you become the victim of someone who does. Any of you know old people who have been victimized by scam artists?

In case you are unfamiliar with it, read up on the NEST family of self-programming thermostats. You need not fear technology.

pstarr, every one of those quotes is consistent and none contradict the others. I'm not sure whether you lack reading comprehension, or just are careless.

[Newfie]

Aspera,

I like your attitude. I see you are a new poster, heres hoping you keep this fresh attitude.

I started cutting back on work a few years ago. I now work 24 hours a week. I'll retire fully dec. 2015.

We live in centere city Philadelphia. No transition town or community efforts here. Lots of "cliff dwellers" (condos) with 100% dependency on the various systems. Our family is decidedly NOT the Brady bunch, and that makes thinngs tough.

Our plan is somewhat unique. Because I know not when the crash may occur I've decided to run with the current system but to have a back up plan. We have a live aboard sailboat. If we have a fast crash, we get on and go to our cabin in newfoundland where I have family. Otherwise it will be our retirement home. We can move around, move to where it is warm, produce our own electricity. I don't have a water maker, yet. But the rain is free.

Fool proof? No. But flexible.

[AdamB]

The “silly” demand coming for the earth’s resources. A forecast this month showed the world might need 124 percent more energy in 2100, raising questions over where the capacity will come from. Dr. Euan Mearns, writing on the Energy Matters blog, looked at the expected increase in population and per capita energy consumption between 2015 and the end of this century, and concluded annual demand could top 29.5 billion tonnes of oil equivalent (TOE). This is roughly equal to 343 petawatt-hours, or around 54 times the amount of all the renewable energy produced in the world in 2017, based on International Energy Agency data. The forecast figure reflects a United Nations medium population growth prediction which would see 11.2 billion people inhabiting the planet by 2100. Per capita energy consumption, meanwhile, is expected to grow in a linear fashion to 2.6 TOE per person a

Global Energy Demand Could Grow 124% by 2100: Even Fossil Fuels Won’t Cut It

[Tanada]

For decades now I have expected our civilization to hit peak resources, experience a deep population crash as industrial farming is disrupted and end up looking like the pictures at this urban exploration photo set,
https://www.exutopia.com/wmds-in-the-florida-keys-the-abandoned-nike-missile-site-hm-40/

However we are not fully committed to this doom and gloom future and I keep hoping we will mitigate it to at least some degree. Unfortunately the longer the foot dragging goes on and less reason for optimism I can find.

[Pops]

For decades now ...

Same.

This week our daughter and her daughter are visiting another granddaughter and her new baby out in Cali. I can be pretty confident in saying they never think about such things.

That is probably good

.

[jato0072]

Peak Oil or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Decline.

It is good to see some old names from over a decade ago! Can an admin PM me and get me back on my old account "jato"? I was unable to recover it so I made this new account.

[jedrider]

For decades now ...

Same.

This week our daughter and her daughter are visiting another granddaughter and her new baby out in Cali. I can be pretty confident in saying they never think about such things.

That is probably good

.

I don't know. Just turn on a TV. The images look eerily similar.

[Tanada]

Peak Oil or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Decline.

It is good to see some old names from over a decade ago! Can an admin PM me and get me back on my old account "jato"? I was unable to recover it so I made this new account.

Sorry jato, during the computer glitch cycle that affected the site a few years ago your old account was permanently disabled. Not even the all powerful owner can restore it to its former glory. Best I can do if you so desire is change your new account name to Jato2 to signify it is the same member returned from a very long time away.