Passive homes for those committed to the environment

The next generation of energy-efficient homes is about to make its debut in South Sound.

Passive homes is an architectural design that eliminates the need for a central heating and cooling system in a building through super insulation, airtight construction that wipes out thermal bridges, and high-tech heat recovery and ventilation systems that maintain air quality.

The design was born in Germany about 15 years ago. Since, some 20,000 homes, schools and office buildings worldwide have been built to Passive House standards, reducing space heating costs by 75 percent to 90 percent in the process. But only a few of those projects are in the United States.

Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems we’re often slow to embrace ideas for sustainable, sensible living from other countries.

The Artisans Group architect Tessa Smith is the only certified Passive House consultant in South Sound. Her enthusiasm for the future of passive homes is almost contagious.

In your Passive House, a hair dryer or a candle or a coil from the hot water heater could be your central heating source, she said.

The Passive House takes energy efficiency to a new level, she said. A case in point: While the premium to construct a $325,000 home built to code climbs about 7 percent using passive standards, the homeowner can recover those extra costs within five years through reduced energy costs. After that, there are savings to be had, year after year.

Passive Homes builds on the progress in energy efficiency marked by “Built Green” and LEED-certified construction, said Zeta Kelly, advertising director for The Artisans Group.

“I’ve been in the energy business for 25 years,” Kelly said. “This is the first time the housing market has been ready for this.”

Smith is working with five clients interested in Passive House projects, including DT and Kim North of Olympia, who have a design for a 2,400-square-foot home on Marion Street in Olympia.

“We did a bunch of research on Passive House. It’s not a fad; it may be the model for the future,” DT North said. If all goes well, the Norths’ project should be under construction in late June or early July.

North said the energy savings are appealing and the design is the right thing to do, if people are serious about reducing their reliance on greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuels.

“We can buy hybrid cars and install energy-efficient heating systems, but if we really want to make a difference, this makes more sense,” he said.

We’ll keep an eye on the North housing project as it moves through the city building permit and construction stages; it should be interesting.

MY WEATHER STATION

Since February, I’ve been in pretty select company: I have a state-of-the-art weather station in my backyard.

OK, I’m exaggerating a bit: The station is part of Washington State University’s AGWeatherNet – 135 computerized weather stations scattered throughout the state. The East Olympia station is about one mile from my house and the latest addition to the publicly funded network formed in the late 1980s to help Eastern Washington farmers map out their crop-irrigation schedules.

In recent years, the weather station network has expanded in reach and audience, project manager Will Corsi said in a phone interview Friday from his office at the WSU Irrigated Agriculture and Research Center in Prosser.

“Our goal is to have a weather station in every county in the state,” he said, noting that 28 of 39 counties have at least one station.

And only about 60 percent of the more than 4,400 people logged in to the system are commercial farmers. Other users include fire departments, clean-air agencies and hobby farmers like me.

Go to the website (weather.wsu.edu), call up a weather station and you have real-time or historic data at your fingertips, including air and soil temperatures, rainfall, wind speed and direction, relative humidity, and leaf wetness.

This week, I’ve watched soil temperatures climb about 6 degrees in East Olympia. The soil was 57.35 degrees at 4:20 p.m. Friday, which tells me it’s a lot easier to germinate seeds this week compared with last. And the air temperature was a very comfortable 73.89 degrees.

There’s a ton of interesting data available at a weather station. For instance, Corsi showed me how to determine how much water my blueberry plants absorbed in the past week – 0.63 inch.

Now, if he could just explain why the leaves and flower buds on two of my blueberry plants have withered and turned brown this spring. I suspect the culprit is mummy berry disease, a fungus that overwinters in infected berries that fall to the ground. The infected berries are white and typically fall off the plant before the fruit ripens.

I do remember quite a few mummy berries on these two plants last summer. I didn’t realize how much damage they could do, sprouting small, mushroom-like structures called apthoecia, which send out spores that can infect leaf buds and young shoots in the cool, wet spring weather.

I’m betting that the weather station data might be able to answer the question: Were the leaf wetness and temperatures conducive to a mummy berry disease outbreak this spring?

I guess it’s up to me to take better advantage of AGWeatherNet in the years ahead – and clean up the mummy berries when they hit the ground.

John Dodge: 360-754-5444 jdodge@theolympian.com www.theolympian.com/soundings