Credit: Modcell

Avert the eyes.  Yes, they are at it again.  Brits hold no modicum of decency when it comes to their efforts at mating sustainable products with modern building methods.  Hemp and straw are so pure and modest, while industry is so brutish and base.  Will it ever work?

Modcell is attempting, in their Flying Factory, to create the illusive commercially viable, modular, super-insulated, high-performance, low energy ‘passive’ buildings built using renewable, locally sourced, carbon sequestering materials.  I know, I know.  Crazy.  When will these money hungry, earth-lovers give up?

Seriously, will anyone ever figure out how to combine truly sustainable materials with commercially viable and modern construction techniques?   Yes.  Modcell has (and I am sure some others have too).  But price is always the kicker.  Earthen materials usually involve higher man hours and thus higher cost (as I have discussed in this blog before).  Straw bale gets around this better than say, cob.

Prefab, modular walls cut down on construction time onsite, which is usually another drawback to earthen homes.  But with Modcell, an average wall panel weighs well over a ton, requiring special equipment to assemble.  (No problem for Modcell, because they make more money putting everything together with their Flying Factory equipment on site.)  So how much does it all cost?

According to a Footprint blog, as quoted by Jetson Green’s write-up of Modcell’s BaleHaus at Bath, a 926 sq. ft. house would cost $214,000.  Once you add the expense of the land this creates a price tag that hardly seems affordable.  I can’t quite figure out why Modcell’s cost ends up this high, but apparently it does.  Ultimately, I still have to ask, “Why would anyone pay to build a Modcell house when it costs more than conventional building?”

If I am a granola I can build my own house with straw and hemp and mud, and spend much less.  If I am a yuppie I can hire a “green” contractor to get the job done for me without spending a whole lot more money, and the end product will be more personalized and unique.  While I still hold out hope that the Granola Ethic can be commercialized for general consumption, we haven’t arrived yet.  I commend Modcell for the grand experiment they are embracing.  Maybe they will pave the path toward eventual success in creating a new species of home, one everybody on earth can embrace without dooming future generations.

You may be thinking, “Who gives a diddly ding dang do.”  But let me tell all you Flanders swearing neigh-sayers, this is pretty ding dang diddly cool.  Let’s not forget that 76% of all electricity produced by U.S. power plants goes to the building sector.  Passive House started up as PassivHaus in the UK, but that was too stinking European sounding for God-Bless-’Em-Americans, so we changed it to Passive House Institute US, but it is the same thing.  Passive House is a certification that literally beats the insulation off of rating systems like LEED.  The graphic shows it pretty well (although LEED is not pictured because it is a bit like comparing apples to oranges).  But the point is that Passive House is the stiffest energy efficiency standard the world has seen by far.

The idea is pretty much how it sounds.  To qualify a house needs to be almost completely passive in its heating/cooling.  The basic philosophy is to capture all possible energy from external sources like sunshine and geo-thermal as well as retaining energy from humans, electronics,etc. and use all that energy as efficiently as possible.  When this is done well, very little other energy is needed.  Dividing your energy needs into the four categories:  household stuff, ventilation, heating/cooling and hot water,  the chart shows how much of each of these you can use and still be considered passive.  The other very cool and very practical element of Passive is that it requires you to be smart, and for the most part low-tech, rather than rely on very expensive gizmos to be efficient.

The passive building philosophy has been around for ever and often requires nothing more than a brain and basic building materials that include dirt, stone, and cellulose.  When building a passive House chances are your most expensive device will be the heat exchanger (which does its best to transfer all heat energy in escaping air back into fresh air entering the home – usually accomplishing somewhere around 70-80% exchange).  After that the next most expensive gizmo might be your hot water heater.  Passive means you absorb solar energy directly from the sun rather than spending $30,000 for solar panels to do it for you.  This means you can’t build a stupid design and slap some expensive gear on it and call it good.  Instead the home has to actually be a smarter and healthier way to exist with and within nature — in other words, sustainable.  Yahoo!  No more LEED debacles.

Passive House may not catch on that fast for just that reason.  There is very little room for commercial greed and muggery.  Building passive also requires a level head for design and a certain kind of Dutch pragmatism.  There, I said it.  Americans just aren’t passive.  We hate the very idea, especially when we find out it used to be spelled, PassivHaus.  I mean,  what is that?  Dammit man.  Tear me out a house from the raw nature around me and beat back any damn thing that tries to encroach on my private castle.  There ain’t nothing passive about it, and if I want a nature retreat, I will buy a Hummer to get there (or a helicopter).  But ding dang, if more of us level-headed ones can start spreading the passive house philosophy sustainability in home building gets much more realistic.

For more practical info. on Passive House Certification and passive building philosophy you can check out Treehugger and the Passive House Institute US.